Elitist Marriage

[lillibet]

So, apparently another elitist upper-middle-class thing that we do is get married, according to this Washington Post article.

This stand-out statistic caught my eye:

...about a third of first births among white women coming before marriage, compared with three-quarters among black women.

Comments

[dpolicar]

Among its many benefits, marriage raises the earnings of men and motivates them to work more hours. It also reduces by two-thirds the likelihood that a family will live in poverty, researchers have learned.

This sets off my "look at the study" alarms wrt implied causation, btw.

I expect that being unable to pay the bills puts significant stress on relationships, as does having two full-time wageearners and insufficient disposable income to afford domestic help.

I also expect that people incapable of holding down a job due to psychological factors may also have some difficulty maintaining a long-term relationship.

I also expect that the increase in married-couple income vs. single-household income confounds with the trend to marry later among professionals (since older professionals generally have higher incomes).

But yeah, that one-third statistic surprises me. Though I'd be interested to know how much of that is "previously committed couple deciding to get legal protections now that she's pregnant" vs the media-conventional shotgun wedding.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Oh, see now, that's interesting. I was interpreting the statistics as "born to unwed mothers" rather than "born to mothers who subsequently get married".

WRT to the causation questions, yes, I had those, too. There were a number of places in the article where I wanted citations and more rigorous grammar.

[dpolicar]

(blink)
Mm. Yes, I was reading "coming before marriage" in a more literal sense, though now that you say it, your reading is far more likely given how studies like this usually work.

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

I read that article in the paper (yes, the physical paper, very old school) this morning. I, too, was struck by that particular line.

I find it really fascinating that getting married is becoming something lower-income and less-well-educated people don't do.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Marriage can have devastating effects on state aid if you're poor and have children, so I really doubt that people are always poor *because* they're not married. That's sort of like the statistic about how people who don't get divorced have better relationships and their children feel better about their home stability. What were we measuring here, exactly?