Women just aren’t that into the ‘marriageable male’ anymore, economists say
The “marriageable male” has steady income. He pays his bills on time and could help support a child, too. He has long captured the interest of economists, who associate him with a healthier economy.
.. Historically, bursts of prosperity among blue-collar men have reduced the share of kids born to unwed parents.
.. The commitment to childbearing with marriage in the ’70s and ’80s is just no longer there.”
.. Riley Wilson, calculated that every $1,000 per capita increase in an area’s fracking production was linked to an additional six births per 1,000 women. About half of those extra babies, she said, were born to married parents.
In other words, more money seemed to bring more kids — regardless of the parents’ marital status.
This baby boom wasn’t as shocking to Kearney as the unofficial relationships. Babies, she explained, are viewed as “normal goods” — a demand that increases when income increase
.. A 10 percent increase in earnings was tied to a 9.6 percent decrease in the share of unmarried women (ages 15 to 34) — and a whopping 25 percent reduction of children born to single moms.
.. In the United States, 40 percent of children are born to unmarried women
.. Educational differences skew the share, however: Sixty-two percent of such kids have mothers who lack a college degree.
.. In his groundbreaking book, “ The Truly Disadvantaged,” Wilson sought to explain why single motherhood was on the rise in predominately black communities and found that employed women were outnumbering employed men. That imbalance, he concluded, reduced women’s incentive to marry.