The Price of Everything - Eduardo Porter [47]
But the most convincing explanation seems to be that the United States has been better at accommodating work and childbearing than other nations. In the United States and some other countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, men have taken over some household tasks, lowering the cost of childbearing for women, allowing them to juggle kids and work outside the home. Some analysts also suggest that the weakening of the marriage bond has had a comparatively mild impact on American fertility because American women chose to have kids on their own. Countries like Italy or Spain, where traditional sexual roles are more entrenched, have had a tougher time overcoming beliefs that tie childbearing to marriage and a more traditional division of labor. Where mothers are expected to rear the young single-handedly, women face a starker choice: either employment or reproduction. As job opportunities have appeared, many have opted to work, dropping out of the mothering business altogether.
The fact that the archetypal marital transaction has been rendered obsolete does not mean modern marriage has nothing to offer. Marriage can yield substantial savings on everything from rent to magazine subscriptions. One study comparing the expenditures of single and married men and women in Canada found that singles living by themselves can spend substantially more than half of what a couple spends to achieve the same standard of living.
Marriage is also a form of insurance. Families with two sources of income are more financially secure than one and are thus more willing to take financial risks. A study of Italian women found that single women invest less in risky assets than married women, suggesting they feel more financially vulnerable. Other researchers found that the legalization of divorce in Ireland in 1996 led to higher savings rates among couples, as they hedged against the higher probability of breaking up and bolstered their finances. Married couples became 10 to 13 percent less likely to be in debt. And savings grew fastest among those who weren’t religious and thus were more likely to divorce.
Marriage in the United States is a more symmetrical institution than it has ever been: both parents work; both care for the children. Today, in 57 percent of married couples, both spouses earn money. In a quarter of these the wife makes more than the husband, up from 16 percent two decades ago. Partners are more similar, in age, education, and earnings prospects. Rather than a kid factory, it is now more like a club, where husbands and wives pool the resources they earn from work to buy leisure and other goods—like child care—from the market.
The classic Hollywood formula where the rich executive married his secretary after discovering she was a pretty young woman once she took off her glasses no longer has any purchase on reality. Today, Americans are about four times as likely to marry someone with the same level of education as they are to marry someone who is more or less educated. And if one spouse in a marriage has more education than the other, it is likely to be the wife. As husbands and wives have become less dependent on each other to produce what the family unit needs, marriage, once meant to last until death, has become a more diverse arrangement than it ever was.
THE CHANGES HAVE taken a toll. Marriage has become unstable among poorer, less educated Americans. They marry and have children at a younger age, but divorce relatively