The Decline and Fall of American Marriage

Here is another article from SwiftEconomics I wrote, again on marriage, albeit unlike this one and this one, it's about the decline of marriage in the United States and the sad state of that institution today.

Conservatives baffle me to no end with all the hubbub they make about gay marriage. Honestly, who cares? As Theodore Olson, veteran of the Reagan and Bush administrations, says: “Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation…The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.” You’d think that conservatives’ bigger concern would be that “individuals who happen to be gay” seem to be the only folks wanting “to share in this vital social institution” these days.

Everyone knows that divorce rates are sky high, about 50% (although there’s some debate about this). But I don’t think most people realize just how far the institution has fallen. So, let’s present a graphic representation, with thanks to the University of Maryland.
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Here’s the divorce rate graphically; basically it shot up in the 60’s as the counter-culture began and no-fault divorce became common, then the rate settled in at about double the previous rate:

So there are a lot of divorces, everybody knows this. What most people don’t realize, however, is that a lot fewer people are getting married now than before. In fact marriages are down by about half:

The common thought here might be that women have become more career oriented and have foregone family. That doesn’t appear to be the case however. As the Pew Research Center has shown, marriage is still relatively strong among the affluent, but has utterly collapsed among the working class:

Overall, the percentage of people 18 years and older who were currently married fell from 72% to 52% from 1960 to 2008. Furthermore, another issue that should be concerning is the reduced fertility rate. Japan is going through a decades long demographic nightmare; basically too many old people and not enough kids. A replacement fertility rate, i.e. to keep the population steady with no immigration or emmigration, is 2.1 children per women. Right now, the U.S. is just below that at 2.05:
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This could obviously spell a lot of trouble for our entitlement system which is built on unfunded liabilities like a Ponzi scheme, requiring an ever greater population to subsidize the current beneficiaries. Luckily (or unluckily depending on your point of view), much of Europe, and the rest of the modern world is in even worse shape. Not only do they have bigger welfare states, their fertility rates have imploded:

Upside down family trees make welfare states no-worky. Furthermore, while we’re having less children, more and more of the few children we do have are being born to people who aren’t in a good position to take care of them. Out-of-wedlock births have skyrocketed in the last 50 years to over 40%:

By 2000, female-headed households had increased from 6% to 23% and male-headed (single parent) households from 1% to 6%. According to Pew, only 4% of people see this as a good thing (69% as bad). And empirically, the majority of Pew respondents have a point since the vast majority of murderers, suicides, delinquents, rapists, drug addicts, high school dropouts and the like come from broken families. Of course this isn’t a gender thing, after all, gay parents do just as well as straight ones. It’s a math thing: 2 > 1.

The ever so controversial Charles Murray has a book coming out called Coming Apart which argues that this trend is the major force behind class stagnation and class separation and blames cultural shifts and the incentives created by the welfare state. He discusses it here, I think it’s definitely worth your time. Either way, it’s clear that marriage in the United States is collapsing.
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Photo Credit: University of Maryland and Pew