American Marriage Formation in the 1980s: How Important was Women’s Economic Independence?

Abstract

Abstract A dramatic rise in the timing of US marriages has been occurring during the past twenty years (Espenshade 1985; Rodgers and Thornton 1985). Between 1970 and 1990 the proportion of 25-year-old women who had never married rose from 14 to 42 per cent; in the 1980s alone, the rise was from 29 to 42 per cent. The prevalence of non-marriage may also be growing, though it is still too soon to determine by how much; but the proportion of 30-year-old women who were still single increased from only 6.6 per cent in 1970 to 11.7 per cent in 1980 and then to 19 per cent in 1990 (US Bureau of the Census 1991, Table B). Probably the most widely accepted explanation of these trends attributes them to women’s greater reluctance to marry because of their growing economic independence.1 That economic independence is thought to be due, first, to women’s increasing employment and, second, for some groups of women, to the presumed greater availability of welfare benefits. This theme is variously elaborated by economists and sociologists, feminists, and right-wing conservatives alike.

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