America, Home of the Transactional Marriage
VICTOR TAN CHEN notes:
“Today, though,
just over half of women in their early 40s with a high-school degree or less
education are married, compared to three-quarters of women with a bachelor’s
degree; in the 1970s, there was barely a difference. The marriage gap for men
has changed less over the years, but there the trend lines have flipped too:
Twenty-five percent of men with high-school degrees or less education have
never married, compared to 23 percent of men with bachelor’s degrees and 14
percent of those with advanced degrees. Meanwhile, divorce rates have continued
to rise among the less educated, while staying more or less steady for college
graduates in recent decades.”