Report: Your Career Is The Reason No One’s Getting Married Anymore

6:00 pm, February 7th | by Rebecca Srulowitz

So no pressure folks, really, but apparently some unknown force has deemed this National Marriage Week USA. Those sadists.

Anyway, unless you’ve been living under a rock since the Great Recession hit, you’ve probably read all the doomsday articles touting the death of marriage and the sudden dearth of morality in this country since, you know, not being married in your twenties is going to herald in the apocalypse. In sum, marriage’s numbers are dwindling and people are running scared. But, according to the Atlantic, the reasons behind the decline in marriage may not actually be what you think.

As women attend college and grad-school in greater numbers and, as a result, snag better jobs with higher-paying salaries, they tend to expend more energy on succeeding at work than they do at succeeding in a relationship. So educated women, really, are just marrying later, and not necessarily eschewing the vows altogether. Everyone can now breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The problem, however, is that while marriage among the most-educated is actually rising, among those who are less educated, the marriage rates are not just declining, they’re in a free-fall. As the Atlantic so eloquently puts it, “the economics of marriage suggest it’s like any other investment. Women are more likely to get hitched when they see big potential gains from a union.” Aside from economics being the least romantic thing possible, this statement would explain why educated women are simply getting hitched later, whereas less educated women aren’t tying the knot at all. Men without degrees and who aren’t getting high-paying jobs, simply put, aren’t a good investment.

TAGS: economics | education | marriage

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