Indeed, if the Times wrote this, it would say, at some point, "So if you're not interested in getting divorced, it helps to have a high salary!" Then it would quote "I Got You Babe" to show how it's no longer accurate about love.

you know, you're right about this.
i read your summary and had 43 objections to the thesis (no, marriage doesn't make you rich, it's just that rich people marry, etc.).

And at least 29 of them were actually addressed when I read the article itself. Which is damned good.

I wonder if the divorce rates have stayed constant, and instead, underneath, the reasons that people drop out of high school has shifted. Or the population that can attend college has shifted.

I feel like I'm in dicey territory though, like I'm calling people who are drawn to college "stable". Perhaps I could write for the NYT.

But the widening income inequality predates the widening divorce-rate inequality. It seems.

It's an interesting piece, but while it recognizes the difference between divorced parents and parents (specifically mothers) who were never married, it elides the distinction in the final analysis. The most glaring omission, not unrelated, is any mention of how lower-class economic status factors into divorce. Being poor is incredibly stressful; being poor with kids is doubly so. It seems obvious to me that a great many people divorce not because they lack good messages, good examples and good education, but because they face strains that people who live more comfortably don't.

What Jesus said.

Also, I'm surprised by this: The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women who drop out of high school is 15%. Among African-Americans, it is a staggering 67%.

I would have thought that pregnancy was the primary reason for young women to drop out of school, so I'm very surprised, not by the 67% figure, but by the 15% figure. Why did the other 85% of drop-out women leave school?

The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women who drop out of high school is 15%. Among African-Americans, it is a staggering 67%.

This is confusingly written, but I *don't* think it is meant to answer the question "Why do people drop out of high school?"

Instead, I think it is meant to be interpreted as: Of all of the women who drop out of high school, 15% of them eventually have children out of wedlock. (Many others eventually have children, but they marry first.)

In contrast to the whole universe of high school dropouts, if you look only at African-American high school dropouts, 67% of them eventually have kids out of wedlock.

I think. But as I said, it's confusingly written.

Perhaps they dropped out and got married?

On another note, I'm glad Becks linked this, because it is unusually more thoughtful than most articles on the topic.

I've seen this claim before, but if it's true, it's really remarkable:
One study found that a college professor's kids hear an average of 2,150 words per hour in the first years of life. Working-class children hear 1,250 and those in welfare families only 620.

When you think about the long-term implications of being comfortable with a wider vocabulary, that's really striking. Of course, I'd love to see a study on the kids who have skills in code-switching versus the kids who are raised to think they don't have to accommodate.

The most glaring omission, not unrelated, is any mention of how lower-class economic status factors into divorce.

I think that's taken as understood.

But while the stressfulness of being poor explains why the marriage gap exists, it doesn't seem to explain why the gap is growing.

Has being poor become more stressful over the past 30 years?

re: 10

Flippantly, but also, I think, accurately, yes.

Has being poor become more stressful over the past 30 years?

Not to rich people.

But while the stressfulness of being poor explains why the marriage gap exists, it doesn't seem to explain why the gap is growing.

It does if you assume that a high-school dropout 30 years ago could still get a job that could easily support a family, and now cannot. In other words, it's not "being poor" so much as that "being poorly educated" is now economically riskier.

9: I suspect that the language thing is HUGE. Not only in strict terms of vocab and iq development, yadda yadda, but also it kind of recursively accrues social gains: other adults are constantly remarking on how bright PK is strictly b/c of his vocabulary, and I'm sure it gets him more attention, more answers to his questions, more reinforcement about being entitled to be treated like an equal, etc.

Haven't read the linked article yet, but the book called "Promises I Can Keep" is really good on the topic of delayed marriage and early childbearing among poor women.

11: I'm willing to buy that, given the shredding of the social safety net that has occurred over the past 30 years.

But the divorce rate for the college-educated has plummeted at the same time: is this because being middle-class has become less stressful?

I'm with Z. Being married is stressful, being poor is stressful, it seems that the two together would be more so. But I don't think that's the only factor, at all. I could easily imagine that as more people get divorced or have kids without marriage around you, it becomes easier to do the same. That would make such behavior more or less like every other behavior on the face of the earth. I could further imagine that expectations make a difference. In specific, if there is something you plan to do in the next ten years that being married will fuck up, you might wait to get married. Especially if there's a lot of cultural capital around you saying, "Don't get married yet," and it doesn't present much of problem because no one you know is married yet. And when you marry older, you're less likely to divorce.

I think that's taken as understood.

Really? I see no evidence of that in the article.

The subhead puts it succintly: 'the widening "marriage gap" is breeding inequality.' My point is that it seems equally plausible that widening inequality is widening the marriage gap.

13: As I point out in 16, that could explain half of the widening gap, i.e. the skyrocketing divorce rate among high-school dropouts.

But what explains the plummeting divorce rate among the college-educated?

Ideally, we want a unified explanation for both.

other adults are constantly remarking on how bright PK is strictly b/c of his vocabulary, and I'm sure it gets him more attention, more answers to his questions, more reinforcement about being entitled to be treated like an equal, etc

Absolutely. Especially the attention. We ran into my son's 2nd grade teacher in the store not too long ago, and she clearly remembered him—six years ago—defining "sitting-duck" as "being vulnerable." Seems normal and unimpressive to such as us but it impresses the hell out of many people.

And when you marry older, you're less likely to divorce.

Is the age of first marriage increasing for college-graduates, perhaps? This could explain the other half of the growing gap.

It's not a unified explanation, but that may not be possible.

20: Yeah, that vicious/virtuous cycle response to a verbal, outgoing kid is unsettling even when your kid is on the good side of it. I see how much positive feedback my kids get for being large-vocabularied charming little chatterboxes, and it just reinforces how screwed kids without that sort of social capital are.

21: I'm pretty sure it is. I think, also, that there are probably a lot of factors at play that track nicely and not so nicely with one another, and the mistake is to attempt to reduce causation to a single factor.

what explains the plummeting divorce rate among the college-educated?

We postpone marriage, we can afford to be picky about partners, and we can hire housekeepers.

The ability to hire housekeepers may explain, in part, the lower divorce rate, but it probably won't explain the falling divorce rate.

I strongly suspect the ability of the college-educated to hire housekeepers has fallen over the past thirty years, as the cost of labor has risen.

As I stated in 21, postponing marriage may be the major variable explaining the falling divorce rate. (Why are college graduates postponing marriage, though? Greater career opportunities for women, I'd hypothesize.)

I doubt that pickiness about marriage partners has increased over the past 30 years, but that would be difficult to measure in any case.

Agree with Z, again. And I don't think "pickiness" is the issue. You marry people like yourself, if you go to college, you're exposed primarily to people who are inclined to defer marriage for the same reason you did and will probably continue to do so. I bet it skews even more for post-grads.

I think `pickiness' is the wrong way to put it. But, if you are likely to a) delay marriage and b) have had one or two long term but not married relationships (describes a lot of people I know), you probably have a much better idea of what does and doesn't work.

Are second marriage divorce statistics lower than 1st marriage? This would be an essentially similar situation.

Also, the best proxy variable I can think with for "pickiness" would be "percentage who choose not to marry at all."

The article suggests ("Many mothers avoid divorce by never marrying in the first place") that this variable is increasing among high-school drop outs. It doesn't say whether it's increasing among the college-educated, but I doubt it. The college-educated are postponing marriage, not foregoing it.

So high-school dropouts would seem to be getting pickier (based on the proxy variable), but the divorce rate is increasing anyway.

Are second marriage divorce statistics lower than 1st marriage?

My recollection is that second marriages fail more often the first ones do, but that (a) this is changing, and (b) this is not true for specific subpopulations (education, age, etc.).

It makes sense that they would (assuming that second means post-divorce only, not post-widowhood). If a population exists such that they are very very very unlikely to divorce for whatever reason, they are only going to show up in the first marriage statistics -- second marriages are made up of those for whom divorce is an option.

I strongly suspect the ability of the college-educated to hire housekeepers has fallen over the past thirty years, as the cost of labor has risen.

Possibly, but I'd bet that our motivation to do so has grown as work hours have increased and women have started working. My parents would never have dreamed of hiring a housekeeper.

I doubt that pickiness about marriage partners has increased over the past 30 years,

I bet you're wrong. Educated, ambitious women with career plans of their own are much, much better able to pick and choose who they marry and have a much broader range of potential partners, including men who make less money than they do as well as guys whose parents were a couple steps above their own.

high-school dropouts would seem to be getting pickier

The book I mentioned above makes this point too: that poor women have the same expectations of marriage as their better-off peers--in fact, their expectations are often higher--and that their inability to meet/attract/keep men who fulfill those expectations is a big reason why they don't get or stay married.

Here's some interesting discussion about the book B is talking about.

30: good point. you have to break it up demographically to make sensible comparisons, I think.

18

It doesn't have to be one or the other, there are such things as feedback loops.