One is the loneliest number ... in more new ways

Source: New York Times

The rich are different from you and me: they’re more likely to get married.

A new report, by Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Hamilton Project, looked at the decline in marriage rates over the last 50 years and found a strong connection to income. Dwindling marriage rates are concentrated among the poor — the very people whose living standards would be most improved by having a second household income.

The trend is especially pronounced among men.

Forty years ago, about nine of 10 American men between the ages of 30 and 50 were married, and the most highly paid men were just slightly more likely to wed than those paid least. Since then, earnings for men in the top tenth of the income distribution have risen and their marriage rates have fallen slightly, from 95 percent in 1970 to 83 percent today.

For men further down the income ladder, however, both earnings and their chances of connubial bliss have plummeted.

In inflation-adjusted terms, the median earnings for men in that age group have fallen about 28 percent since 1970. In the same period, their marriage rates have fallen to 64 percent, from 91 percent.

The poorest men have had even sharper financial and romantic declines: men in the bottom quartile of earnings have had a wage cut of 60 percent, and a contemporaneous drop in marriage rates to about 50 percent, from 86 percent.

The decline in the share of men at all ages who are married is partly a result of higher divorce rates, but primarily because they never got married to begin with.

Economically, the last four decades have been a very different story for women. More women have entered the work force, and those in the work force have gotten raises. In 1970, the median annual earnings for female workers 30 to 50 were $19,000; in 2010 the corresponding figure reached about $30,000.

Marriage rates have also fallen for women in that age group on most, though not all, rungs of the income ladder. As with men, the declines are biggest among the poorest workers.

For the bottom 70 percent of middle-aged working women — the women who, a generation earlier, would have needed a husband to support them — marriage rates declined by more than 15 percentage points in the last 40 years. But marriage rates for the top 10 percent of female earners either held steady or rose.

It’s not clear why marriage rates for the top-earning women rose. Perhaps the highest-paid female workers in the 1970s achieved that status by forgoing a personal life. And perhaps today it’s more socially acceptable for well-paid women to hire nannies and other household help so that they can maintain a family life, making marriage a more practical possibility.

Whatever the case, the concentration of marriage among the richest Americans is amplifying the increase in income inequality.

Rich men are marrying rich women, creating doubly rich households for them and their children. And the poor are staying poor and alone.

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