Yes, male wages explain marriage declines

Back in my day, conservative think tanks would publish content that amounted to “We should shame and/or criminalize poor women into getting married before having kids because they are too stupid to realize that’s what they should do.”

This conclusion relies on one true fact and one batshit assumption.

The true fact is that kids whose biological parents get married before conceiving and stay married have better life outcomes along every measurable dimension than kids who raised by a single parent (who is almost always the mother).

The batshit assumption is that somehow bullying a woman into marrying the kind of man she’s already decided would be worse to be married to than single motherhood is going to somehow turn her into the kind of parent who gets married before having kids and stays that way and whose kids enjoy the benefits of having that kind of parent.

Today, I regret to report that the conservative think tank industrial complex is still pumping out batshit papers. But the flavor of the bullshit has changed.

In a recent AEI report, Scott Winship is ready to consider that perhaps the quality of the men available to them has might have something to do with why women are choosing single motherhood.

But he only looks at male income, ignoring all the other reasons women might be rejecting marriage.

Much worse than that, he only looks at median male wages. My brother in Christ. The decline in marriage is pretty much only happening among men in the bottom-half of the income and education distribution. And since most marriages are assortative, it’s also pretty much only happening among women in the bottom-half of the income and education distribution.

That fact alone is pretty fucking telling with regard to how male wages, and, more specifically, the male breadwinner norm, impacts marriage rates. The fact remains that demand for male breadwinners exceeds supply. That the decline in male breadwinners and stagnation of bottom-half male wages correspond pretty closely to the decline in marriage rates is also pretty fucking telling with regard to whether these facts correlate.

Instead of looking at any of this data, however, Winship looks at median wages and concludes that marriage is down and single motherhood is up because women are too rich to get married. I am not making this up.

Allow me to remind you that as much as declining marriage is a bottom-half problem, single motherhood is even moreso.

It’s incredible, truly, that AEI would publish a report that ignores the data that’s absolutely central to answering the question it raises.

It’s especially galling because single motherhood really is worth our concern.