Cold feet and money lies aren't the only things keeping Americans from walking down the aisle.
New research from the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project says that whether you're likely to tie the knot probably has more to do with the numbers on your paycheck than whether you're scared of becoming your parents. In other words, what we thought were societal issues are actually money issues.
In "The Marriage Gap: The Impact of Economic and Technological Change on Marriage Rates," authors Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney write that most middle-aged men in the 1970s were married regardless of income.
Today, marriage rates have declined "across the board," largely due to men's dwindling pay stubs.
This isn't news per se—we've covered how unemployment is wrecking Americans' love lives—but it is interesting to see just how rich you need to be in order to put a ring on it.
The Hamilton Project chart below illustrates how shifts in income have impacted men's proclivity for marriage over time—83% of men ages 30-50 in the top 10% of annual earnings are married today, whereas only 64% of median earners and half of those at the bottom 25th percentile of earnings are married, the authors found.
Compare that to the men in 1970, whose marriage rates were 95% (top earners), 91% (median earners) and 60% (bottom 25th percentile of earners), respectively.
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Now let's look at the women. For those who made strides in past 40 years to pursue careers and attain an education, the top 10% of female earners were most likely to marry, while the bottom 70 percent of earners saw marriage rates decline over 15 percentage points.
The authors note that fewer women with careers view marriage as an economic necessity, which they believe might account for why the wealthy ones marry—more money, fewer issues—and why we believe makes the rest of them less likely to settle.
Check out The Hamilton Project's chart below:
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