Men Increasingly Marry Better-Educated, Better-Paid Women
In a reversal of a long-standing trend, new research has found that men are now more likely to marry women who are more educated and make more money than they. The same is true in the reverse, as women are more likely than ever to marry a man who makes less money or has less education than she.
The New York Times is reporting that the Pew Research Center will be releasing the results of the research. Pew Research analyzed U.S. census data.
The women studied are in the 30- to 44-year-old age range. This is the first generation in which more women than men have college degrees. Also, since the 1970s, women’s income level has been increasing at a faster rate than that of men.
“Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women,” said Pew Center spokesman Paul Fucito. “In recent decades, with the rise of well-paid working wives, the economic gains of marriage have been a greater benefit for men.”
The study seems to show what many might feel anecdotally: that the dynamics of marriage have changed in recent decades. In the past, according to Pew representatives, women did not work as much as they do now, so marriage was tougher for those parents who had more children and the financial strain was more centered on the husbands income—one theory for the high divorce rate.
These differences stand out when one compares men’s and women’s education and income figures from 1970 with those of 2007, which is where the study’s data focuses. For example, according to USA Today, in 1970, 64% of college graduates were men and 36% were women. In 2007, 53.5% of college graduates were women, and 46.5% were men.
This shift applies to income as well. Women’s income has increased by 44 percent between 1970 and 2007, compared to a 6 percent increase in men’s income in the same time. It should be noted that there is still an overall earning gap between men and women, with men still earning more. But the large increase in women’s earnings has narrowed the gap between the two, and that has changed the way that men and women approach marriage in terms of stability and expectations.
“Just as women are saying they want more from marriage than an economic security blanket, men are more open to marrying women with more education and earnings,” according to Stephanie Coontz, a historian at Evergreen State College in Washington state.
Early critics of the study’s approach think that its scope is too limited, and that measuring earnings alone doesn’t capture the entire picture of marriage dynamics. Economist Betsey Stevenson acknowledges that the study and its results raise interesting questions, but that spending patterns within the marriage and other factors need to be studied to determine who is benefiting from the changes in marriage dynamics.
While more work will likely be done, the research does seem to show that marriage is changing, and that potential partners are changing the ways that they approach long-term unions.
