Are Modern Women Worth Marrying? | Shortage of Husbands or Wives?  In this episode we talk about marriage and what does it mean to us as millennials. Is marriage even a goal at this point?   

We sit down with @_teylornichole to see what her opions where on this topic. Follow her on Instagram Follow her on Youtube @TeylorNichole  

According to the newest jobs report, over 11% of Black women were unemployed in September, compared to just around 8% of the general population. Last year, Black women earned 62 cents on the dollar compared to white men. The economic racism and sexism that Black women face are reflected in the rate of marriage for Black women. More than 70% of Black women are unmarried, according to the 2010 census. Among those reasons: centuries of laws and customs denying Black people the right to marry, welfare policies and the prison-industrial complex.  The black–white differences in marriage in the US are striking. In 2006, 67% of white women between ages 25 and 54 were married, while only 34% of black women were – a gap of 33 percentage points. And as Figure 1 shows, the racial marriage gap has been increasing – it was 17 percentage points in 1980. The differences in family structure between black and white households have been an ongoing concern for policymakers. In his famous report, Moynihan (1965) saw a clear link between family structure and growing social problems, such as poverty and crime, among the black population. 

Today, the growing racial gap in marital status of the US population has led some researchers to question whether marriage is only for white people (Banks 2011).  This dramatic racial gap in marriage matters because the marital structure has important implications for the living arrangements and well-being of children. In 2015, about 54% of black children lived with a single mother, while the share of white children living with a single mother was about 22%.1 Differences in family structure are a contributing factor to differences in economic resources. In 2006, 33% of black children were living below the poverty line, while only 14% of white children were.2 A growing body of literature suggests that the conditions under which children grow up matter for their well-being as adults. Carneiro and Heckman (2003) and Cunha et al. (2006), among others, show that differences between children appear at very early ages and that the family environment plays a significant role in generating these differences.  

Why do black individuals marry at lower rates than white individuals? Wilson (1987) suggests that characteristics of the black male population, and in particular the lack of marriageable black men due to high rates of unemployment and incarceration, are an important factor contributing to the black-white differences in marital status. This is usually referred to as the ‘Wilson hypothesis’.   Figure 2 illustrates this hypothesis. The horizontal axis shows by how much more the share of incarcerated or non-employed men increased for black men than for white men from 1980 to 2006 across US states, while the vertical axis shows by how much more the share of never-married women declined for black than for white women. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the share of men without a job or in prison increased by 8 percentage points more for black men than for white men. At the same time, the share of women who were never married dropped by 23 percentage points more for black women than for white women. Larger increases in incarceration for men are associated with larger declines in marriage for women.   Figure 2 Changes in non-employment and incarceration of males in relation to the decline in ever-married females