Growing up with two married parents can be the greatest privilege of all.
This is a controversial issue. a finding from influential American economist Melissa S. Kearney's more than two decades of research on poverty and social inequality.
It's no secret that the benefits of marriage go beyond just companionship, as it is the sum total of a couple's wealth. grows when resources are pooled, which helps both them and their children.
However, this has not stopped marriage from falling out of fashion among most couples except the richest and most educated.
The connection between marriage and wealth has been discussed in academic circles for many years.
But Kearney quickly realized that when she tried to discuss the topic with other economists, no one wanted to talk about it.
One famous economist even approached her in private after she raised the topic during a talk, armed with pointed questions about why marriage can affect the prosperity of a family at all.
She suspected that he was a divorced father.
Her upcoming book, «Two-Parent Privilege,» has also raised fears of a backlash at the University of Chicago Press.
«I know there were definitely people behind the scenes who were less interested or had strong reactions to the topic,» she says. she.
«There were certainly reviewers who didn't think a publisher should publish a book lamenting the decline of marriage.»
1609 decline in marriage rates
Although none of the criticisms were related to the reliability of the data, her argument that «we really need to address the problem of reducing marriage rates» is debatable.
The book's title alone generated a lot of angry letters and tweets.
“Some people, as soon as they saw the title on Twitter, started saying things like, “Here we go, we're going to stigmatize single moms to the point where they have no choice but to stay in abusive marriages.» Of course, I don’t think that’s what any of us should do,” Kearney says.
«Another line of expected resistance is, 'Well, there's a rise in single parenthood because women can now support themselves financially and don't have to marry jerks, and that's a good thing.' I say again: yes, I agree.”
This same debate has been raging in the social sciences for many years, so such intense attention did not come as such a surprise to Kearney.
In almost all advanced economies, the rate of people getting married has fallen sharply in recent decades.
According to the OECD, in the United States in 1991, there were 9.2 new marriages for every 1,000 people.
Almost 30 years later, this figure has fallen to 6.1 in 2019, t .e. by a third.
In the UK, the decline was even steeper over the same period, with just 3.7 marriages for every 1,000 people in 2019. That's down 40% from 1991.
Such trends are problematic, Kearney says, because of lost economic benefits.
The reason marriage is so powerful is because two people pooling their income, assets and time create economies of scale that can support families in a number of ways, whether it's getting a mortgage or making payments. childcare.
Figures show that wealthy people are more likely to get married.
Research by the Marriage Foundation, a think tank, previously found that almost 90% of new mothers in the most wealthy families in Britain were married.
This figure then fell to just over 20% when looking at the poorest in the UK.
Notably, children whose parents are married also tend to earn more than their peers.
1,609 married people have more savings
“Children who grow up with two parents are more likely to avoid childhood poverty,” says Kearney, adding that they are more likely to avoid problems in school and achieve higher education.
“A lot of this can be explained by the fact that they had more resources in the home when they were children,” she says.
“It's a simple fact of complex math: When there are two parents in a family, there is more income. This income benefits children across the board, and we're seeing it lead to better outcomes.»
Kearney says that despite the overall downturn, not everyone has fallen out of love with marriage, and there's a reason for that, too.< /p>
“The group that has done well economically over the past 40 years—college-educated workers in particular—continue to marry and have children in two-parent households at roughly the same proportions.”
This occurred even though the share of people with higher education increased. .
In the US as a whole, the share of children living with married parents fell from 77% in 1980 to 63% in 2019.
The decline was much less pronounced among those whose mothers had a four-year college degree—a drop of just 6 percentage points to 84%.
In the UK, a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year found that 68% of highly educated mothers were married in 2006-12, up from 86% in 1991-95.
Kearney's research also shows that marriage rates in working-class areas tend to fall when the economy goes into recession.
In the UK, the highest rates of single motherhood are in areas with high levels of deprivation, such as Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and Blackpool.
“My understanding of what has happened is the interaction of liberalized social norms and changing economic conditions, and that's why we've seen this happen predominantly outside the college-educated classroom,” Kearney says.
In other words, changing attitudes toward marriage and relationships have coincided with stagnating wages, especially for people with lower levels of education.
Although many parents today live and raise their children together without ever tying the knot, evidence shows that this does not benefit the children in the same way.
This is especially true in the US, and is also evident in the UK.
1609 snapshot of families
According to Kearney, this is due to the greater likelihood of relationship breakdown if parents live together. unmarried.
“Marriage is the institution that most secures the long-term commitment of parents to live together and pool their resources to care for the children,” says Kearney.
“In the US, even unmarried parents who were romantically involved and perhaps even living together at the time of the child's birth very rarely stayed together until the child was 5, let alone 14. »
Researchers in the UK found that 88% of married parents were still together by the time their child's fifth birthday.
For those who lived together but were not married marriage, this figure was 67% — that is, every third marriage broke up.
Yet despite all the evidence, the debate over marriage and wealth has rarely had a social or political impact.
“The issue has not received the attention it deserves as a political issue. or as an urgent issue at a societal level precisely because many people have decided it should be banned,” says Kearney.
She is keen to emphasize that her findings are not intended to paint the problem of those whose marriages are falling apart or who end up raising children alone.
“In most cases, parents singles are children's greatest asset. They're doing the best they can in a really bad situation,» she says.
However, that doesn't mean policymakers should ignore the problem, Kearney says, because the key question to answer is: why so many mothers raise their children alone.
Only then will we understand the obstacles to creating a stable marriage and two-parent family.
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