On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Melissa Kearney about her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. Nat and Melissa discuss the decline in marriage among non-college-educated parents, why having two parents in the home matters for student outcomes, the stock of marriageable men, whether studying family structure is taboo, what the fracking boom can teach us about the decline in marriage, how marriage became decoupled from raising children, universal basic income for parents, why Asian Americans seem immune from the broader decline in marriage, intergenerational households, the difficulty of parenting, the importance of culture, and more.

Melissa Kearney is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland and the Director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group.

Show Notes:

The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind

A Driver of Inequality That Not Enough People Are Talking About

The Puzzle of Falling US Birth Rates since the Great Recession

Male Earnings, Marriageable Men, and Non-Marital Fertility: Evidence from the Fracking Boom

The Economics of Non-Marital Childbearing and The “Marriage Premium for Children”

Investigating Recent Trends in the U.S. Teen Birth Rate

Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV's 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing