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LOVE AND MARRIAGE...See? Even when it's about love, it's really about class:
The emerging gulf is instead one of class � what demographers, sociologists and those who study the often depressing statistics about the wedded state call a �marriage gap� between the well-off and the less so.Statistics show that college educated women are more likely to marry than non-college educated women � although they marry, on average, two years later...Now, marriage has become more one of equals; when more highly educated men marry, it tends to be more highly educated women...Women with more education also are becoming less likely to divorce, or inclined to divorce, than those with less education. They are even less likely to be widowed all in all, less likely to end up alone.[...]The difference extends across race lines: black women are significantly less likely to marry than white women, but among blacks, women with a college education are more likely to marry than those who do not.Among women ages 25-34, 59 percent of college graduates are married, compared with 51 percent of non-college graduates, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau�s June 2006 Current Population Survey by Steven P. Martin, a sociologist at the University of Maryland. The same is true at older age groups: the difference is 75 percent to 62 percent for those ages 35-44, and 50 percent to 41 percent among those 65 and older.The difference is smaller between men and women. According to the census, 55 percent of men are married, down from 69.3 percent in 1960, and 51.5 percent of women are, down from 65.9 percent in 1960.This may seem naive, and I'm sure there's an obvious statistical explanation for it, but how are fewer women than men married? Presumably, they're mostly married to each other, no? Meanwhile, these marriage trends will be a powerful magnifier of economic inequality, as I've explained in more detail here.UPDATE: I ask and, internets, you answer. There are more women than men, because men die younger, so even though a roughly equal number are married, married women make up a smaller percentage of the female population than do men. Thanks to all you know-it-alls who e-mailed, IM'd, or commented.
--Ezra Klein
