Gallup published a welcome contribution to the growing realization that the decline of marriage is harming the nation last week, noting that while the institution has suffered among Democrats and Republicans, it is the Democratic Party that is leading the institution’s decline.
“After decades of little partisan difference,” Gallup notes, “a gap in the marriage rates of Republicans and Democrats cracked open in the 1980s and has widened in the past quarter century.”
Specifically, as recently as 1979, 87% of Democrats between the ages of 30-50 were married compared to just 83% of Republicans. Today, the percentage of Republicans of similar age who are married has fallen to 67%, a decline of 16 points, but the percentage of Democrats that age who are married has cratered to 49%, a 38-point decline.
“The partisan marriage gap has expanded largely because Democrats are increasingly forgoing marriage altogether,” Gallup reports. “Among Democrats, the share of 30- to 50-year-olds who report having never married more than tripled between 1979 and 2024, from 8% to 26%. By contrast, the percentage of Republicans who have never married increased much less substantially, from 6% to 12%.”
So why are more and more Democrats abandoning marriage? Well, it turns out that Democrats are predisposed to undervalue what marriage does for both individuals and the community.
Despite the fact that married couples are happier than unmarried people , Gallup finds that the vast majority of Democrats simply don’t believe married people are happier.
Gallup also found that Democrats are less likely to agree with the fact that “marriage improves partnerships by strengthening the commitment to one another.”
Democrats are also more likely to say that “marriage is an outdated institution,” and are less likely to “hope my child marries someone, when the time is right.”
While Gallup does note that demographic differences between the prairies “partly explain the divergence,” Gallup concludes that “changes in attitudes about marriage” are likely the greatest factor.
Attitudes about marriage certainly play a role in the decline of marriage. But then Gallup continues, “An alternative explanation for declining marriage rates, often advanced by economists and sociologists, is that men have become less attractive or marriageable because some combination of trade policies and technological advancements has taken away high-paying jobs, even as women have seen a large growth in their income. Yet, this narrative relies on questionable facts and logic. Male earnings have, in fact, risen since the 1960s, controlling for inflation, and men are still far more likely to work and to earn higher wages than women. Additionally, if economic considerations dictated whether people marry, then marriage rates should be at an all-time high, because both men and women have never stood to gain so much financially by combining incomes, as both groups are earning more than previous generations.”
This is a misguided dismissal of the economic and policy causes of marriage’s decline. While it is true that male wages have grown overall, that growth has not been equal. According to the Congressional Research Service median real wages for everyone grew by 8.8% between 1979 and 2019. But for men, while real wages for the top 90th percentile of earners rose 42%, the median male earner saw real wages fall 3% and workers in the bottom 10% saw wages fall 7.7%. Meanwhile, women saw wage growth of 71% in the 90th percentile and 9.6% in the bottom 10 percentile.
And it is young men who have been hit the hardest. According to the U.S. Census Bureau , “In 1975, only 25 percent of men, aged 25 to 34, had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men.” And it is among these poor young men, of either party, that marriage has declined the most . So yes, there has been a marked decline in marriageable men.
Concurrent with the decline in marriageable men, there has also been a rise in means tested social safety net programs that punish young working couples that want to get married. Yes, the value of cash payments through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program has fallen since 1979, but the value of Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, Section 8 housing, and Affordable Care Act subsidies have all risen. Combined, the federal government spends over $1 trillion a year on means-tested programs that punish marriage.
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And the working poor are well aware of these marriage penalties. The 2015 American Family Survey found that 31% of people knew someone who chose not to get married “for fear of losing welfare benefits, Medicaid, food stamps, or other government benefits.”
The decline of marriage in the United States absolutely is connected to the Democratic Party’s negative attitude towards the utility of the institution. But the economic troubles faced by working class men, and the policies pursued by the Democratic Party to enlarge the welfare state, are also big contributors as well.
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