The Marriage Gap Is America's Most Overlooked Source of Inequality |
Inequality
The Marriage Gap Is America's Most Overlooked Source of Inequality
Every dollar of well-intentioned government assistance comes with a behavioral price tag that we've largely refused to count.
Veronique de Rugy | 4.30.2026 1:25 PM
Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google
Media Contact & Reprint Requests
(Illustration: Lex Villena; Midjourney)
The most consequential inequality in America is not the wealth gap or the wage gap. It may not be the racial opportunity gap. The marriage gap is wreaking havoc. And unfortunately, it's the gap that gets the least attention.
I'm a libertarian. I don't care whom, or if, you marry. Yet I'm reminded that there is a problem by a new report from the American Enterprise Institute. Edited by Kevin Corinth and Scott Winship, "Land of Opportunity: Advancing the American Dream" covers a broad range of challenges facing the country today, from the cost of living and workforce development to education, crime, and the erosion of community life.
The authors are not culture warriors. They are empirical economists. But among their most important findings are those dealing with the collapse of the American family and what the government has done to accelerate it.
From economist Robert VerBruggen's chapter on the erosion of married parenthood, I learned that in the mid-20th century, only one in 20 children were born out of wedlock. Now it's two in five. I also learned that America has the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households: 23........