Glenn Stanton, director of family-formation studies at Focus on the Family and the author of The Ring Makes All the Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Cohabitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage (Moody, 2011), has a great article on how marriage rates are becoming dramatically and increasingly divided along class lines. This observation suggests that the poor will get poorer, and the rich richer (as marrieds tend to have greater wealth than their single counterparts). An excerpt:
In 1960, the poorly and moderately educated were only 10 percent less likely to be married than the college educated with both numbers quite high: 84 and 94 respectively. That parity largely held until 1978. Today, the two groups are separated by a 35 percent margin….marriage is sinking dramatically among low- and middle-class Americans, down from 84 percent to a minority of 48 percent today.”
Read the whole thing.