The End of Marriage? Posner

The End of Marriage? Posner

Marriage rates have declined steeply in the United States and other Western nations. The number of marriages in the United States in 1950, per one thousand population, was 11; it is now 7—and the number is much lower in Western European nations. Of Americans aged 25 to 44, 62 percent of women are married and 59 percent of men; 8 percent of women are cohabiting and 10 percent of men. Divorce is frequent; only two-thirds of American marriages last more than 10 years. Forty percent of children are born out of wedlock.

It is easier to explain the decline in marriage rates than to assess the significance of the decline for the health of the society. Decline in infant mortality and increase in job opportunities for women (and hence increased opportunity cost of motherhood) have reduced the demand for children and thereby raised the average age of marriage, which leads to a reduced number of marriages. And women, being abler to support themselves than in the past, are more picky about marriage, and that reduces the marriage rate. Moreover, with many more women working in the market than only in the household, the gains from specialization in marriage have fallen. In addition, both sexes have greater access to sex outside of marriage; marrying for sex is becoming a thing of the past as taboos against extramarital sex disappear. And legal changes have reduced the difference between marriage and close substitutes like cohabitation: no longer are children born out of wedlock subjected to disadvantages associated with “illegitimacy,” such as being denied rights of inheritance; and no-fault divorce has lowered the cost of divorce.

In a pluralistic society, widespread practices tend to become normative. The more unmarried people there are, the more the unmarried state seems normal. Between 1930 and 1990, the percentage of U.S. households consisting of a married couple (with or without children) declined from 84 percent to 56 percent. In the 1950s (and earlier)—an era of greater social conformity than at present—unmarried men in particular were suspected of being homosexual (at a time when homosexuality was strongly reprobated), selfish (incapable of commitment), or otherwise “lacking something.”

There is considerable evidence that married people are happier and healthier than unmarried, but the direction of causation is unclear. Happier and healthier people are more desirable as marriage partners and also better able to cope with the strains that are inevitable in a close relationship with another person to whom one is not related. The American population has over time become healthier and even somewhat happier, yet these trends have not reversed the decline in the marriage rate.

Will the marriage rate go all the way to zero, or close to it, and be replaced by a pure contractual regime (the triumph of freedom of contract)? I think not. The reason is that even in an era of no-fault divorce and a high divorce rate, marriage signifies commitment in a way that no other adult relationship does—if only because marrying couples greatly exaggerate the likelihood of never divorcing. Partly because of the exaggerated expectations that people bring to marriage, it is socially and emotionally much more difficult to terminate a marriage than a cohabitation (euphemistically but imprecisely termed nowadays a “committed relationship”). And it is difficult to imagine satisfactory contractual substitutes--which would have to define marital obligations and their satisfactory performance and specify sanctions for breach--that would create a comparable commitment. So as long there is a demand for a a really committed relationship, although the commitment cannot be nearly as strong as when divorce was difficult or even forbidden altogether (but when short life spans sharply limited the duration of most marriages), one can expect marriage to persist.

This is provided that commitment yields substantial expected benefits. It does, as is most easily seen in a culture in which divorce is strongly disapproved or even forbidden (or remarriage forbidden). For then each spouse has a strong incentive to invest in the marriage, as when the wife takes time off from work to have children and provide extensive child care and the husband invests in the children by providing material support. When children are born out of wedlock, the entire burden of child care is likely to fall on the mother, to the detriment of the children.

A puzzle is why the marriage rate of college-educated women, which used to be substantially lower than that of other women, has risen, though it remains slightly lower than theirs. One might think that educated women's demand for marriage would fall as the labor-market demand for educated women rose. But at the same time their better income prospects attract men. Also, the general rise in the age of marriage reduces the relative effect of education on age of marriage (women—men also—tend to postpone marriage until they complete their education). There may also be an investment motive. With increased returns to education and fewer children per family, educated people are motivated and able to invest in their children’s upbringing and schooling more than the uneducated have either the resources or felt need to do. Men seek out intelligent women (and vice versa) as marriage partners in the hope of having children who will be more educable and successful.

The Effects on Children of the Decline in Marriage-Becker

Marriage emerged as the most popular institution throughout history primarily because it was an effective arrangement to improve the care and upbringing of children. Marriage is not necessary to have children, but it has been of enormous importance in the rearing of children. Birds and other non-human species do not have “marriage”, but both parents are often involved in raising their offspring.

With the sharp declines in birth rates since 1970 in Western and other rich countries, including much larger fractions of adults who do not have any children, both men and women have significantly increased their ages at marriage, and sharply raised their propensities to divorce. In 1950, a typical woman and man married at ages 20.3 and 22.8, respectively, whereas now the typical marital ages are 26.0 and 27.7, respectively. These changes in age at marriage are related to reduced demand for many children, increased college education of both men and women but especially of women, much greater labor force participation of married and divorced women, and the narrowing of the gender gap in earnings.

There are several reasons to be concerned about the below population replacement fertility levels in all of Europe and about half the world’s population, including China and Japan. Low fertility makes it much harder to finance retirement benefits, medical care for the aged, and other entitlements that rely on taxing working age populations to pay for the support of older persons. Low birth rates in richer countries also induce increased migration of young workers from poorer countries with large families to provide the unskilled and other young workers that every society needs. Low birth rates lead to sex-selected abortions in societies with a strong preference for having at least one son, as in China and parts of India. Below replacement fertility eventually causes populations to decline (aside from migration), which has unknown consequences for economic growth and other macro economic and social developments. As important as these topics are, I will not discuss them further since our subject today is low marriage rates and high propensities to divorce, which raise distinct issues from the effects of low fertility.

The most important economic and social concerns due to low marriage rates are the effects on rearing of children. These effects are not due to lower marriage rates alone, but rather to the close connection between these low rates and high divorce rates, and to the greater propensity of women to have children without being married, or without living with the fathers of their children.

Although many single mothers do an absolutely wonderful job in raising their children, common sense and most academic findings suggest that having a father present during the raising of children generally has a positive effect on the development of non-cognitive traits of children. These include a general respect for authority and reduced rebelliousness in school, and the avoidance of gangs and other criminal activities. It also appears that the absence of fathers has a greater effect on the non-cognitive traits of sons than daughters, although that is a less well-established finding.

The sharp deterioration during the past 50 years in the stability of black families in America is responsible, I believe, for much of the continuing dismal record in school performance and in society more generally of children from black families. When over half of all black children are raised in families with only one parent, one can hardly be optimistic about their development. Black leaders were highly critical of Patrick Moynihan when in a famous report in 1965 he attributed the low achievement levels of many black children to the absence of fathers in their homes. However, most leaders of the black community have come around to sharing Moynihan’s views as a result of the further deterioration in black families since his report, and the continuing poor school performance, high crime rates, and low incomes and high unemployment of many black children and young adults.

Children in white and Hispanic families have also suffered from the growth in divorce rates and in single motherhood. Children of divorced parents and other children raised by single moms generally do worse in school, attend less good schools, are more likely to drop out of high school, and have poorer job market experiences. Although the moms in single parent families also have lower incomes and education, I believe that a sizable portion of the below average performance of children from single parent families is due to their family structures.

I am not claiming that children are worst off when their parents divorce if their parents were fighting a lot, or if they had abusive fathers. Rather, it appears that up to a significant point, children are better off in intact families even when their families are not ideal. If correct, this suggests a considerable gain not from encouraging marriage per se, but from policies that encourage families to stay together. One approach is for governments to subsidize intact families, whatever their income levels, rather than just subsidizing families with only one parent because they have lower incomes. Other approaches may be better, but the effects of single parenting on the development of children is a far more important question than the question of who can call themselves “married”, and other family issues that preoccupy the attention of many politicians and others.