Under the header “The looming marriage shock,” Politico’s Katelyn Fossett posted a quick take last week on whether we should be worried that the growing gender imbalance at our nation’s universities will upend dating and marriage.
Long story short, she thinks “the chatter has been overblown.” Unfortunately, she overlooked some things.
Fossett talked to Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves, who admits “women and men have increasingly been marrying people of similar educational backgrounds” but then goes on to say, “I’m not seeing any evidence that there are women out there with master’s degrees looking down their noses at guys with just a bachelor’s degree.”
Fair enough, but as Fossett later concedes, there is ample evidence that women do look for a mate who earns more than she does. But Fossett then waves this fact away by denying a link between earning power and education. She notes that there is still a wage gap between men and women despite women obtaining more education.
What Fossett doesn’t seem to know is that we know why the wage gap exists: motherhood. Unmarried women without children earn about the same as men do. It is only after motherhood that women’s pay dips. And the dip in pay is much more severe for high-earning women.
The reality is that while there are many men who earn comfortable salaries without going to college, the number of these men is declining right along with college-educated males. MIT economist David Autor and UCLA economist Melanie Wasserman write:
And Reeves does tell Fossett that “the lack of equally educated men could be more pronounced for women at the bottom of the income distribution.” But Reeves doesn’t seem at all concerned for these men and women. “I think if we were going to see a shock to the family, it would have happened already,” Reeves says.
Well, guess what? The shock to the family already happened.
In 1960, 75% of all households included a married couple and 44% of all households included a married couple with children. The married household was the foundation of the nation. Today, just 49% of all households include a married couple and just 19% of them include a married couple with children. Marriage is falling apart.
But it is not falling apart equally. Among adults with the lowest incomes (the 20th percentile and below), only 26% are married. Among working-class adults (those with incomes between the 20th and 50th percentile), only 39% are married. But among middle-class and high earners (the top half of incomes), 56% of adults are married.
Since unmarried homes lead to worse outcomes for boys than girls, the gender imbalance at universities will only get worse and the percentage of Americans living in happily married households will only keep falling.
