They don’t: Marriage rates continue to plummet

From The New York Times: 

Of all the milestones on the road to adulthood, Americans are increasingly forgoing one of the biggest: marriage.

Twenty percent of adults older than 25, about 42 million people, have never married, up from 9 percent in 1960, according to data in a Pew Research Center report published Wednesday.

The trend has been consistent for decades. Since 1970, each group of young adults has been less likely to marry than the previous generation. Although part of the trend can be attributed to the fact that people are simply marrying older, Pew projects that a quarter of today’s young adults will have never married by 2030, which would be the highest share in modern history.

So as the left and right debate the relationship among marriage, parenthood and poverty, young people seem to be sending policy makers a message: that marriage is not necessarily part of the plan. That shift could reshape not just American families, but also policies like those around taxes, children and entitlements.

In many ways, the retreat from marriage is the result of evolving gender roles. But the decline in marriages is also a result of the country’s deepening socioeconomic divide. Until a few decades ago, marriage was mostly an economic equation, as the Nobel-winning economist Gary Becker described: Men earned money to support a family while women ran the household.

But with the rise of birth control, household technology and women in the work force, marriage became less about economics and more about love, as the historian Stephanie Coontz said in her book, “Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.”

Educated, high-income people are still marrying at high rates and tending to stay married, according to economists and demographers who study the issue. Remaining unmarried is more common among the less educated, blacks and the young, Pew found.

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