Posted on: Friday, August 23, 2002

Get grad gown, you'll likely end in wedding gown

By Dan Vergano
USA Today

Putting off wedding bells to wear a graduation gown doesn't seem to hurt a woman's marriage chances these days, researchers say. And in fact, a marriage in which the wife has a college degree may be more stable than others.

A marriage forecast based on 1990 Census data suggests that, while more educated women were less likely to marry a half-century ago, modern-day college grads are more likely to marry than their less-educated peers.

"The marriage market is changing," says sociologist Joshua Goldstein of Princeton University, who co-authored the forecast.

And despite fears that men might disdain a brainy wife, "if that was true once, it's less than true now," he says.

The report, noted in a recent American Sociological Association journal, says that about 90 percent of all women born in 1950 married eventually, regardless of their education. But for women born in 1960, a split has emerged where about 94 percent of female college graduates marry compared with 89 percent of those women with less education.

In 1986, a study of earlier Census data found more-educated women faced longer marriage odds, Goldstein says. Based on the study, "Newsweek" magazine suggested in a cover story that an unmarried 40-year-old woman was more likely to be kidnapped by a terrorist than get hitched.

Researchers have shown numerous benefits to society from marriage, ranging from better health to reduced welfare costs.

In the upcoming Senate reauthorization of the federal welfare reform laws, the Bush administration has proposed adding $300 million to promote getting and staying married. Goldstein and others worry such efforts won't help unless the economic strains on modern marriages are also dealt with.

"Marriage is becoming a luxury good," says sociologist Frank Furstenberg of the University of Pennsylvania. Rising expectations of partners and living standards over the last 50 years have shifted a heavier burden onto the institution of marriage, he says.

His research suggests marriage partners with more education are better able to pay for services, such as childcare, that ease some of the strain on marriage.

There is no doubt that marriage rates have remained high for college grads while falling for other groups, says social policy expert Christopher Jencks of Harvard.