The conservative theory of marriage just got blown apart

Take away the jobs, and marriage rates crash

Oh no!
(Image credit: monkeybusinessimages/iStock)

A great fraction of conservatives and centrists in Washington, D.C., are obsessed with poor people's relative lack of marriage. They look at social dysfunction among the lower classes, conclude that it happens because they don't conform to bourgeois social norms, and then rig up some policy to bludgeon the poor into getting married (and staying in school, getting a job, and so on).

There's just one problem with this: It's completely backwards. Poor people are not irresponsibly refusing to settle down. In fact, as a new paper shows, economically insecure people are less likely to get married because of that insecurity. The whole center-right theory of marriage is nonsense.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.