I've got marriage on my mind
If Virginia is for lovers, Massachusetts should become the state for marriage.
What is it that makes this seem like such a provocative proposition? It should not be.
In the presidential contest, as in almost every presidential contest, the economy has emerged as the dominant issue. Foreclosures are soaring. So are gas prices. The dollar is falling. Do we bail out Wall Street? And if so, what should we require in exchange?
No one, though, talks about marriage, or the lack of it - an underappreciated key in separating the haves and have-nots in our society.
Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum notes that we have reached this disturbing benchmark: In 2006, for the first time in US history, half of all births to women under 30 were out of wedlock. For a little context, consider: That number was a mere 6 percent in 1960. "A silent time bomb," Sum calls it.
This constant ratcheting up of children out of wedlock doesn't make headlines in the same way that the foreclosure crisis does, or the meltdown on Wall Street. But unlike market cycles that come and go, the fragmentation of the family is a decades-long disaster that has done as much to further economic inequality and create two Americas as anything.
Kay S. Hymowitz, author of "Marriage and Caste in America," believes that marriage now poses an even larger social divide than race.
"We are becoming a nation of separate and unequal families that threatens to last into the foreseeable future," Hymowitz writes. "On the one hand, well-educated women make more money. They get married, only then have their children, and raise them with their husbands. Those children are more likely to grow up to be well-adjusted, to do well in school, to go to college, to marry, and only then have children.
"On the other hand, we have low-income women raising children alone, who are more likely to be low-income, to drop out of school, or, if they do make it to college, go to a less elite college, and become single parents themselves."
Andy Sum has spent years documenting rising inequality in America and has come to believe that what has happened to families is at the heart of it. What the numbers show, he says, is increasing single-parenthood, limited earnings among single moms, declining earnings and rate of marriage among men with no post-secondary schooling, and the tendency for college-educated young adults to marry one another, what the sociologists call "assortative mating." MBAs marry MBAs; nobody is interested in rescuing Cinderella any more.
The result: The economic divide has become a canyon. In 2006, young families with children in the top quintile of income distribution had a mean income of nearly $88,000 versus a mean of only $5,200 for those in the bottom 20 percent, a relative difference of 17 times.
Says Sum: "These demographic developments are creating a future nightmare for the country. Inequality will continue to accelerate and society will continue to fragment in the absence of a major reversal in young married couple formation."
Not every marriage will work; this I know myself. But in general, marriage is good - for families and for the country. Massachusetts has always prided itself on being a leader. We pioneered gay marriage, a good thing. What if we became a national leader in promoting and strengthening marriage? What's so provocative about that?
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Neighborhood news. With the collapse of Bear Stearns, the Massachusetts treasurer's office is in the market for a new investment bank. Bear was in line to handle a refunding of $564 million in auction rate securities, when the bottom fell out. State Treasurer Tim Cahill says he will let the dust settle before moving ahead. Among those in the hunt for this choice piece of business: JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Lehman Bros., Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.
