American Dream, Redux |

So, it’s true. Even the Republicans know it. (But, to a large degree, they wish it weren’t true… because it removes one of their political daggers.) The American economy is recovering nicely- not where we want it, but better than it’s been in nearly a decade.

Yet, we still see the middle class and the American Dream slipping away. What no one want to really say, though, is that, to a large extent, the American citizenry itself is to blame. You see, we just aren’t getting – or staying- married the way we were in the past. Right now, only about 1/2 of the households in the US are married (50.5%)- which compares poorly to the 72% of us that were just 55 years ago.

But, that’s just one number. It gets worse when we start parsing those numbers. In 1960, we were married in roughly the same proportion across the economic and educational strata. But now- 64% of those of us who graduated from college are married (OK- that’s not me), while less than 48% who have some or no college are actually married.

This exacerbates the economic divide. We know (and I’ve written about this often- check for ‘married’ in the index to pick one of a series of posts) that married couples are significantly better off financially than those who are not. Those with fewer assets (typically a house) or more debt (which, unfortunately, nowadays means the millennials and their skyrocketing student debt) are less likely to marry- or to enter into stable marriages.

By the time we are ready to retire (65 to 69 years of age) we see that those who are married have 10 times the savings as single person households ($111,600 vs. $ 12,500). While neither of those sums will let these folks retire in “style”, you can bet the lower cash level will make the retired life a whole less pretty.

And, it’s not getting better. A Brookings study (2012) found that marriage rates increased in the 3 decades since 1970 only for women who were among the top 10% of earners. Moreover, women in the bottom 65% of the income strata were far less likely to be married (20% less). The numbers for the men were very similar.

Drs. Robert Lerman (Urban Institute) and W. Bradford Wilcox (UVa) in their report for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI, 2014) discerned that marriage is one of the indicators for economic success. It was as good a predictor as race, ethnicity, or education. This marriage factor, by the way, holds for same-sex couples as well as heterosexual ones (Ineke Mushovic, Movement Advancement Project).

This is why improving the lot of Americans and recovering the American Dream is akin to solving the problem of the Gordian Knot.