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I recently read a podcast transcript about marriage research that said some really interesting things about this.
The number of women wanting to get married is not decreasing. It is holding steady.
The number of married women with college degrees is also holding mostly steady.
The number of married women without college degrees is seeing large declines.
Why is this? What the researchers think is happening is that college-educated women are marrying all of the marriageable men. Men with college degrees marry at high rates, mostly to college-educated women, but there aren’t enough of them to go around. So college-educated women are starting to dip into the non-college dating pool, and basically they’re marrying all of the “best” ones in that group (tradesmen, small business owners, etc.) This leaves non-college women with a group of men who struggle with employment, addiction, and incarceration. (In their data this shows up as: parts of the country with the highest levels of male incarceration, addiction, etc. also have the lowest marriage rates for non-college women.) So it isn’t just a Christian phenomenon: women aren’t willing to put up with sub-par men anymore, and when those are the only option, they choose not to marry.
If anyone else wants to read (or listen) the podcast and transcript are here: theatlantic.com/podcast…