JESSE POWELL writes: 

The American Community Survey, conducted by the Census Bureau, has added some questions about marital events to its annual survey. The 2009 American Community Survey results have been released and a report-titled “Marital Events of Americans: 2009” has been issued. These findings confirm the widely-publicized reports of the National Marriage Project, which have shown a widening social gap, with divorce and illegitimacy rates much higher among the uneducated.

Before offering these newest findings of the American Community Survey, I would like to comment on the focus of the National Marriage Project, which has enormous influence in the national conversation over family decline. 

The Marriage Project consistently promotes the idea that if only everybody took up the values of the well-educated, or somehow learned the secrets of marriage success that the college educated know, everything would be fine and dandy. There are two problems with this orientation. 

First of all, the well-off are just that, the well-off. If everybody was educated then those at or near the top would simply be average. The fact that the more successful are more successful is true but not interesting. The fact that there is a distribution of level of success in people’s family life is again true but not surprising. 

It is fine to say that the unsuccessful should imitate the successful and thereby increase their level of success but it must be remembered that the unsuccessful are unsuccessful for a reason, the educated may or may not be able to transfer their advantages to the lower classes; the effort would be noble but the mere fact that the college-educated are doing better than the rest of us is not a revelation. 

The second problem with the idea that the lower classes should just emulate the well-off and therefore better themselves is that in reality the upper class and the lower class have the same disease, the disease has just progressed further in the lower classes than it has in the upper classes. There might indeed be some value in the lower classes emulating the upper classes but even if successful it wouldn’t solve the problem. 

I guess part of the message of the Marriage Project is the claim that indeed the culture of the college educated is different from the culture of the high school dropout and that this difference in culture explains the success of the one group compared to the other group. 

This is the claim that I disagree with; the cultures of the college graduate and the high school dropout are part of the same broader culture. The advantage of the college graduate is a class advantage rather than a cultural advantage. Two different people can have different levels of competence while at the same time being a part of the same culture. The person with greater competence will have greater success than the person with lesser competence even though they both may belong to the same group. My claim is that the college graduate and the high school graduate or dropout are both part of the same group but that the college graduate has a greater level of competence. The Marriage Project seems to claim that the college graduate and the high school dropout are in two separate cultures, in two separate groups, and that if the high school dropout joined the culture of the college graduate the family problems of the high school dropout would be solved. I would say the college graduate and the high school dropout are at two different class levels but that they are both part of the same group, that they share a common culture. 

High school dropouts in 1950 had a higher Married Parents Ratio than college graduates do today. So intelligence is not the all-determining factor. College graduates cannot claim their culture is sustainable if the children of college graduates do not achieve the same level of family success as their parents. Furthermore, the fertility rate of college graduates is significantly below replacement level.

Returning to the latest findings of the “American Community Survey: Marital Events of Americans: 2009,” the implied divorce rate (the number of divorces in 2009 compared to the number of marriages) among those 25 and over for each educational group is illustrated in the first table below. (It’s important to bear in mind that marriages and divorces that occur before the age of 25 are not counted leading to the very high divorce rates given.)

Probability of divorce of parents per year by educational attainment of head of household:

Below is the proportion of married couple households with own children by the educational attainment of the householder in 2010 (from the Current Population Survey):

Below is the proportion of children who live with married parents according to the highest level of education of either parent in 2010 (from the Current Population Survey):

The labels in the table below are: Prob. Div. (Probability of Divorce, the likelihood per year that a child will see their parents divorce given the educational level of their parents); %Mar (Percent Married, the proportion of children with married parents by education level of their parents); %Mar. Fail. (Percent Marriage Failure, this is the proportion of children whose parents are married that will experience their parents getting a divorce each year)

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