1. Falling Marriage Rates Reveal Economic
Fault Lines
Feb. 8, 2015
By ANDREW L. YARROW
Tracking the long decline in married households in the United States.
CreditTaylor Goad
Will Valentine’s Day, always a popular moment for popping the
question, see fewer marriage proposals this year than in generations
past?
The age-old lesson about marriage that has been communicated by
parents everywhere(twoare stronger than one) is now brushing up

2. against a 21st-century reality: The percentage of married households
in the United States has fallen to a historic low.
Census data cited in a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center show
that the number of married households fell to 50.5 percent in 2012
from a high of about 72 percent in 1960.
Among the less well educated, the number of married households
has fallen even more. A 2011 study by Pew found that although 64
percent of college-educated Americans were married, fewer than 48
percent of those with some college or less were married. In 1960, the
report found, the two groups were about equally likely to be married.
This trend has opened up a yawning economic divide. Studies have
shown that married women and men tend to be much better off
financially than those who are unmarried, and that those who have
fewer assets and more debt early on are less likely to marry or have
stable marriages than those who are more financially secure.
Louis Ulmer and Tamara Deschaine, a married couple who live in Anchorage.
CreditChris Miller Photography
“There are relatively few relationships that are more fully
documented than those between economic well-being and marriage,”
said Ron Haskins, who is the author of many scholarly papers on
marriage and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in
Washington.
The connection between marriage and wealth is much more than
additive. A 2012 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research
found that the median 65-to-69-year-old married household had

3. almost 10 times as much in savings as the typical single-person
household: $111,600 compared with $12,500. “It’s a plain fact that
people who are married have more income, wealth and savings that
last into their retirement,” Mr. Haskins said.
There are many factors other than marital status that account for
wealth and poverty. But the experiences and outlooks of Louis
Ulmer, a 34-year-old married business-development manager in
Anchorage and Evette Ferguson, a never-married 48-year-old nurse
in Arlington, Tex., illustrate the separate and often unequal
economic realities faced by married and unmarried Americans.
When Mr. Ulmer, who works for the First National Bank of Alaska,
and Tamara Deschaine, 34, were wed three years ago, he wasn’t sure
if his marriage would make them better able to save.
But the words of a college economics professor are still fresh in his
mind. “He said, ‘The twomost important things in a person’s life are
their money and their family — in that order,’ ” Mr. Ulmer said.
“Twelve years out of college and into the real world, I’ve accepted the
truth: He was spot on. Being married gives us the desire to have
greater financial security and less debt.”
Ms. Ferguson, who works in Texas for Teva Pharmaceuticals, said,
“Maybe I would be more financially secure if I were married.”
Although she has a house and a pretty secure retirement in place, she
has debts, too. She sees how her married sister has been better able
to build up financial assets, even though her sister’s husband was
recently laid off. “They have a cushion I don’t have,” Ms. Ferguson
said. “I think she’s better off being married. She’s been able to save
more and doesn’t have to use all her money just to pay the bills, as I
do.”
“If I had someone else,” she said, “it would be easier.”
Jonathan Rauch, another fellow at the Brookings Institution and a
leader of the Marriage Opportunity Council, a new multi-institution
project, said, “Marriage is thriving among people with four-year
college diplomas, but the further down you go on the educational and
economic totem pole, the worse it’s doing.”
“There’s a growing danger that marriage, with all its advantages for
stability, income and child well-being, will look like a gated
community for the baccalaureate class, with ever-shrinking working-
class participation,” Mr. Rauch said. “We’re not there yet, but that’s
the trajectory we’re on.”

4. Evette Ferguson, a never-married 48-year-old nurse in Arlington, Tex.
In a nation that places a high value on personal freedom, it could be
tempting to wave away these concerns. The decision to go it alone
can be every bit as fulfilling and life-affirming as the decision to enter
into a marriage. Nevertheless, other data are signaling that for a
number of Americans, not marrying carries with it a risk of falling
behind economically.
Other research indicates that those who find themselves already
lower on the socioeconomic ladder may be less likely to ever marry. A
2012 study by the Brookings Institution found that only women in
the top 10 percent of Americans in earnings saw their marriage rates
increase between 1970 and 2011, whereas women in the bottom 65
percent in earnings had become much less likely to marry, with their
marriage rate declining by more than 20 percentage points. This was
also mirrored in the experiences of men in the study.
Marriage is about as good a predictor of economic success as are
education, race and ethnicity, according to a 2014 study by Robert
Lerman at the Urban Institute, and W. Bradford Wilcox, director of
the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
In their analysis of census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, they
concluded that if married households today equaled the numbers
seen in 1980, “the growth in median income of families with children
would be 44 percent higher.”
The study also found a link between the decline in the number of
Americans “who form and maintain stable, married families” and the
growth in income inequality.

5. As united as social scientists appear to be about the strong
correlation between marriage and higher net worth, a good many of
them part company over whether greater marital wealth results from
having the skills and propensity to work hard, save, stay out of debt
and also seek out and marry those with the same attributes — versus
those who start down the same road having low wages, little in
savings and less education and as such may find it harder to find and
maintain stable marriages.
“Married men are more likely to work, make more money and not
engage in dangerous behaviors like drunken driving and committing
crimes,” Mr. Haskins contends.
For women coming of age in an era when their own educational and
career prospects are brighter than ever, hitching their star to
someone with high personal debts or negligible savings — or both —
seems to have become unappealing.
In 2013, the economist David H. Autor and Melanie Wasserman, a
graduate student at M.I.T., found that, “Sharp declines in the earning
power of non-college males combined with the economic self-
sufficiency of women — rising educational attainment, falling gender
gap and greater female control over fertility choices — have reduced
the economic value of marriage for women.”
Doug and Twila Sutherland, who've been married nearly 69 years.
Daniel Schwartzman, a 25-year-old community college student who
lives in a group house in Albuquerque, N.M., wishes to marry but
said he would not date anyone who was not financially secure. “If a

6. woman had big car loans,student loans and other debt, and didn’t
have a job, I would rule her out,” he said.
Money is an issue that persists for a number of his friends who he
said have put off marriage because of lack of savings. “They want
their partner to be responsible and not dragging them down
financially,” he said. “A lot of couples move in with their parents,
because everyone is just trying to survive on minimum-wage jobs.”
Married same-sex couples tend to be more financially secure than
single gay Americans, said Ineke Mushovic, the executive director of
the Movement Advancement Project in Denver, a policy research
organization focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
issues. Poverty rates for gay men and lesbians living alone are more
than 20 percent, compared with 4.3 percent for partnered gay men
and 7.6 percent for partnered lesbians, the organization reports.
The divorce rate has helped reduce the number of married
households in the United States. At the same time, others have
postponed marriage or never married. And census data show that the
number of cohabiting couples has shot up to 7.5 million in 2011 from
450,000 in 1960.
Yet, the desire to marry remains strong. In a 2013 Gallup Poll, only 5
percent of Americans reported that they did not want to marry.
Mr. Ulmer of Anchorage said that he and his wife have found that
“twoincomes are obviously better than one and they help pay for
more. But there are many expenses I wouldn’t have incurred in the
first place as a single person.”
Being married, he believes, “gives us the desire to have greater
financial security and less debt. My wife and I enjoy every minute of
those moments together, which in turn leads us to plan more
effectively for retirement so we can continue to afford the lifestyle we
want.”
“I see the clear connection between marriage and savings,” said Doug
Sutherland, a 94-year-old minister from Raymore, Mo., whose wife
of nearly 69 years, Twila, 92, has resided in an Alzheimer’s center
since 2010. “Way back when, we started a savings account and we
prided ourselves on saving regularly,” he said. “I’m thankful we did”
— most notably, he added, because of the $8,000 a month in bills for
his wife’s inpatient care.
Insufficient savings and other financial matters are the most
common cause of discord among American couples, said Ernie
Almonte, chairman of the National C.P.A. Financial Literacy

7. Commission, a part of the American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants, which studied this problem.
“Divorce causes a decrease in wealth that is larger than just splitting
a couple’s assets in half,” said Jay Zagorsky, an Ohio State University
economist. “If you really want to increase your wealth, get married
and stay married.”
Andrew L. Yarrow, a historian and public policy professional who has taught 20th-
century U.S. history at American University and is the author of Forgive Us Our Debts:
The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility, has just published a new
book, Thrift: The History of an American Cultural Movement.
A version of this article appears in print on February 8, 2015, on page ST15 of the New
York edition with the headline: Falling Marriage Rates Reveal Economic Fault
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