It used to be said that a college education was a bad thing for women in the marriage market. Compared to their non-educated counterparts, college-educated couples have traditionally married at a later age. However, a new report reveals this is simply no longer true.
In 1950, 93 percent of white women without college degrees married by age 40, while only 66 percent of college-educated couples did so. After analyzing 2008 American Community survey data, the Pew Research Center (PRC) found that 62 percent of white college-educated women were married or had been married by age 30, compared with 60 percent of those who lacked a bachelor’s degree.
MARRIAGE REVERSAL AND MONEY
Among the possible explanations for this shift are the declining economic fortunes of young men without a college degree and their increasing tendency to cohabit with a partner rather than marry, the report read.
From 1990 to 2008, the median annual earnings of college-educated men ages 25 to 34 rose by 5 percent, while it dropped by 12 percent for those with only a high school diploma. During this same time, the number of non-married couples living together more than doubled. According to the PRC, about half of these people are under 35 and more than 80 percent do not have a college degree.
“A college degree is something you really need to have before getting married because otherwise, it really deters your job possibilities and chances of being financially stable,” said 22-year-old Susannah Gingerich.
Gingerich recently became engaged while in her senior year of college. She said age isn’t an important factor when getting married. “We have our goals right now, we know what we are going to be doing in our careers, and we know that we are going to be able to sustain the life that we want without sacrificing much,” she said.
According to her fiancé, Nick Larson, the college marriage reversal “really says something about our generation as a whole.” To Nick, it serves as an indication as to what his generation’s priorities are. “It says that we think a lot more about finances and our careers than previous generations did,” he said.
“Young people today know they need to have some sort of financial infrastructure and an idea of how everything is going to play out in the future if their marriage is going to work,” Larson said, “They need to know what they are trying to pursue in their professional career.”
READ THE REPORT
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A MODERN DAY MARRIAGE
During the same time period the college marriage reversal took place, for the first time in U.S. history young women out-earned men in all but 3 of the 150 biggest cities in the United States.
Compared with their 1970 counterparts, in 2007 a larger share of men were married to women whose education and income exceeded their own, according to the PRC. The study says:
A larger share of men in 2007, compared with their 1970 counterparts, are married to women whose education and income exceed their own, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of demographic and economic trend data. A larger share of women are married to men with less education and income. From an economic perspective, these trends have contributed to a gender role reversal in the gains from marriage. In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage enhanced the economic status of women more than that of men. In recent decades, however, the economic gains associated with marriage have been greater for men than for women.
However, in a separate Pew Research Center survey, 67 percent of Americans said that in order to be ready for marriage, it’s very important for a man to be able to support his family financially. In contrast, only 33 percent said the same for women.
This infographic by the PRC offers a depiction of what exactly constitutes the modern day marriage in America:
DIVORCE RATES LOWER FOR COLLEGE-EDUCATED
The PRC found a similar gap in divorce rates between couples with college degrees and couples without. In 2008, marriages between college-educated couples were less likely to end in divorce. According to the Census Bureau data, the younger the couple, the larger the marriage gap. For married adults between the ages of 25 and 29, 3.6 percent ended in divorce. From the same age group, less than 2 percent of couples with college degrees saw their marriage end in divorce.
Gingerich said she looked at her parent’s divorce when determining if she should get married. “Our parents’ marriages and high divorce rate educated my generation,” she said.
“People that have their college degrees can sit down and plan it out and see if they can afford it,” Gingerich said. “They can see their parents—whose generation more often than not ended in divorce, and from that they are able to be more weary of the factors that caused the divorce rate before, and they feel more capable in handling their own relationships.”
LOVE & MONEY
To Larson, there were two reasons he proposed to his fiancé: love and money.
“I did it because, not only do I love her, but also we were financially ready,” he said. “There’s really no other answer other than I was truly in love. There was no question in my mind.”
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