Too poor to marry? A cross-national comparison of the SES gradient in non-marriage

Catherine T. Kenney, Independent Researcher
Joshua R. Goldstein, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

In the United States, several recent studies find a negative educational gradient in non-marriage—those with more education are actually more, rather than less, likely ever to marry. Observations about Northwestern Europe, which contributed to the development of Second Demographic Transition theory, suggest the opposite: In at least some countries, the most-educated are more likely to embrace alternatives to marriage, such as long-term cohabitation. In this paper, we seek answers to the following questions: Which pattern of association is more common? How does the existence of a positive or negative educational gradient in non-marriage, or the steepness of the gradient, vary with the characteristics of the society? Is the main divide in behavior between the most- (or least-) disadvantaged members of the society and everyone else, or are there differences between each gradation of social status? How does non-marriage diffuse over time? The answers to these questions matter because non-marriage has implications for a wide variety of sociologically important issues, from kinship to consumption. Using data from the IPUMS-International for 32 countries, augmented for 9 European countries by data from the Generations and Gender Surveys and the Harmonized Histories data, we examine the association between non-marriage and education for women for whom non-marriage appears most likely to be an alternative, rather than a precursor, to marriage: those who are age 35-44, never-married, and living with a partner and children. We find, first, that the negative educational gradient in non-marriage seen in the United States appears to be common, while a pattern of higher non-marriage among the most-educated is relatively rare. In addition, the negative gradient, where it appears, is remarkably consistent across educational levels. Finally, we see no evidence for the emancipation theories’ prediction that the diffusion of non-marriage through societies will occur from the “top down”.