Understanding the Decline in Marriage Rates and Its Impact

Melissa Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland joins Assistant Editor Luis Parrales to talk about her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. The two discuss the decline in married households over the past decades, how that decline has exacerbated inequality and negatively impacted parents and children, and why it’s so controversial to talk about marriage as a policy matter in the first place.

Show notes:

-Melissa’s profile at the University of Maryland

-Melissa’s profile at Brookings

-A Driver of Inequality That Not Enough People Are Talking About

-Male Earnings, Marriageable Men, and Nonmarital Fertility: Evidence from the Fracking Boom

-The Puzzle of Falling US Birth Rates Since the Great Recession

-Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective

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