Two Steps Progress, One Step Regress

A very strange thing is happening in the U.S.: Disparities in wealth and income between rich and poor are increasing.  To make matters worse, inter-generational social mobility is declining, too.  If you're born poor, it is increasingly likely that you will remain poor, and even that your children and their children will be poor, too.    "The land of opportunity" is a title that becomes more ironic every year (for most).  How can this be happening when GDP continues to rise, when more money is available for the poor to attend college, and when traditional barriers to disadvantaged groups are being legislated away?  How is this regression possible when there have been so many Progressive victories?

I have a hypothesis, and I'm going to warn you that it's not politically correct.  But then, when have I ever been concerned with PC or the judgments of others?  The answer is: a lot more than you probably think.  I've been terrified of posting this up despite having it in the back of my mind for a few years, and only recently found the courage to say it publicly.  I can only hope I don't lose too many friends, but that's one of the risks of saying things you don't hear anyone else saying. 

Before I continue, allow me to call your attention to the title of this piece.  My point in what I am about to say is not to advocate a reactionary return to the good ol' days -- I would not undo the changes to society that I am going to be talking about.  All I am doing is identifying that in addition to the obvious benefits they have brought (which are so widely accepted, including by me, that I won't talk about them), they may be contributing to new problems and challenges to society which we must address.  The best way to address a problem is first to figure out its cause, and this is my attempt to do just that. 

Again, I emphasize that recognizing that a social change comes with costs does not mean you oppose that social change.  I fully support the social changes that I will be talking about, despite the fact that I believe they have also caused social damage which must be repaired (with a new solution, not a reversion to the old way).

My hypothesis, which I make no claims about having proven, is that the increasing social stratification we are experiencing is caused at least in part by women's liberation.  (Now you see why I had to waste three paragraphs carefully qualifying what I was about to say.)  But how are they connected?


My reasoning is based primarily on a topic that was discussed in classes I took on economic demography and women in the labor force.  In short, there has been a growing trend over the past several decades showing that men and women are increasingly likely to marry partners with similar levels of education and similar socioeconomic backgrounds.  That was as far as the research we discussed went -- there wasn't any speculation about the ramifications of this trend for society, so I will now fill in that speculation and the reasoning by which I arrived at the conclusion I have. 

What makes somebody who is born to rich parents more likely to succeed?  They are more likely to have more social capital, more financial capital, more educational capital, more cultural capital, and possibly even more genetic capital.  Then they leverage their extensive capital advantages to take all of the best positions in society and accrue even more capital, which means that their children will have the same (or greater!) advantages they did.


If elite members of society are more likely to marry other elite members of society now than they used to be (as opposed to marrying people "below" themselves), then we would expect to see that in each generation, there is greater accumulation of all the various capital resources in the hands of those who already have the most.  The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer, and there will be less and less movement up and down the social ladder.  This is exactly what we are seeing.

So the question is, why have elite members of society started marrying each other more exclusively?  I would suggest that one of the reasons is women's liberation.  Here's why:

Before the feminist revolution, the traits that made a woman attractive as a marriage partner and the traits that made a man an attractive marriage partner were vastly different.  Women of all social classes were supposed to learn how to manage a household and raise children.  Men, on the other hand, were expected to learn a trade and earn the money that would be used to run a household.  This division meant that whereas sons would largely be limited to the same class as their fathers, daughters of poor men could easily marry "up," and daughters of rich men could easily be forced to marry "down."

Furthermore, because children tend to receive the genes and culture of both parents, not just one, it could easily be that a boy would have the misfortune or inheriting his mother's skill at running a household rather than his father's talents for making money (and so fall out of the upper class), or alternatively that a rich girl would follow her father's footsteps and then be denied a professional position and overlooked by potential husbands seeking a homemaker.  Having two very different definitions of success for each of the sexes provided a way for society to randomize which people's children would end up in which social class, creating a great deal of opportunity for social mobility.

After the feminist revolution, however, that duality has been disappearing.  What makes a woman attractive is more and more similar to what makes a man attractive, and to a lesser extent, what makes a man attractive is including more of what previously made a woman attractive.  Because people generally end up marrying someone from the other sex who is at a similar level of attractiveness, this means that highly educated, wealthy professionals will seek each other out in a way that they did not previously.  Consequently, where poor, uneducated women were able to marry up in society, they cannot any longer.  As such, the children of poor girls are just as likely to be poor as the children of poor boys.  Hence, the decline in inter-generational social mobility and the accumulation of wealth at the highest levels of society.

There's more.  As woman have gained financial independence, the average age at which women choose to marry has gone up.  Where previously women were hoping to be married in their 20s, now that number is more like 30s.  Additionally, the more independent a woman is (that is, the higher her socioeconomic status is) the longer she can spend sorting through potential mates to find the most attractive one.  This means that high status women have much more freedom to wait until they meet high status men, while low status women will be more likely to marry low status men.  Again, this will lead to an accumulation of all of society's various capital resources at the highest socioeconomic level.

The age of marriage also matters because it has a big impact on who people associate with before selecting their mates.  It goes without saying that Americans only marry people they've met and associated with.  If people typically married in their 20s, that would almost necessarily mean they are marrying people they met in school or at one of their first jobs (or at church).  Rich and poor alike generally attend the same schools, the same local churches, and work or eat at the same places where they get their first job.  As people age, social stratification becomes more pronounced -- how wealthy you are largely determines where you will be and whom you will meet after you get out of high school, and your professional path is much more apparent at 30 than it was at 20. 

As one's age rises, the people with which one interacts are increasingly likely to be from the same socioeconomic level, so it follows that if the average age of marriage rises, people are more likely to marry others from their own socioeconomic level.  This is especially true now, as wealthy, educated people are less likely to attend church services where they would have mingled with the poor (and where the poor were explicitly praised as being closer to heaven). 

Again, I must point out that I have not collected any data to support my hypothesis, so I could very easily be entirely wrong.  Also, I will remind you that I am certainly not suggesting that society would be better off by returning to the way things were before the feminist revolution.  All I am saying is that I suspect that much of the social stratification that we are observing can be explained by changes in marriage patterns that were brought about by female financial independence.  If we want to regain the social mobility that our male-dominated society allowed, we need to think about how it was achieved and how we can achieve it again (but this time, without all the oppression).