Is marriage only for the rich?
Oct 28, 2013, 5:20 PM
This is the story that YOU wanted to hear us talk about! It received 44 percent of the vote in our Radioactive poll!
It used to be that when people fell in love, they got married as soon as possible and then started planning their lives.
But according to Today.com, marriage is now viewed as a “luxury good” that only some can afford.
“We’re setting a higher bar for marriage today,” [said Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia]. “That bar is not easily met for working class and poor women and men.”
Experts said the new financial shift in marriage betrays the fact that the entire marriage paradigm is shifting away from the stereotypical “doctor marries nurse” scenario. Those getting married today are looking for spouses who are at the same education and income levels as them.
“There’s the economic reality that people … often feel like they need two earners in the family to meet a given standard of living,” [Christine Schwartz, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison] said.
Interestingly, many studies have shown that people with a college degree tend to stay married longer than others who did not attend college.
