A New Culture of Love: Economic Parity

Seventeen years ago, our then six year old son handed my husband and me a list of seven qualities he felt his future wife should have. Intelligence ranked among the top three along with a sense of humor and a refusal to smoke.

"This is good," I told my boy, "The key to a successful marriage? You should marry someone smarter than you are."

Little did I  know a new cultural trend had already begun.  According to a Jan. 19, 2010 Pew Research Center report on social and demographic trends, women have closed the gap in economic parity between themselves and their husbands in less than four decades. The trend may not be directly related to intelligence, but it is definitely related to education.

In 1970, for instance, just over half (52%) of American couples born and raised in the States shared an equal amount of education by the time they'd reached their prime (30-44yrs), while in 28% of American households, husbands held more diplomas and degrees than their wives.

By the time 2007 rolled around,  53% of marriages had couples of the same age on equal educational footing; but by then, 28% of the marriages had flipped the scale, with the wife holding more degrees than the husband.

The trend continued to flip in terms of employment and careers. In 1970, only 4% of marriages had wives out-earning their spouses. By 2007 this had jumped to 22%. And women brought home 44% more of the bacon in 2007 than they did in 1970, while their husband's earning potential increased by only 6%.

Statistically speaking, marriage is good for the pocketbook, as the majority of high earners in the country are currently married. So love in the time of recession and war remains a vital component of economic survival, if not economic parity. With women now outnumbering men on college campuses across the nation, it shouldn't be too  difficult for men of the Millennial generation like my son to find smart, funny women as mates.

Being married is also associated with a lower incidence of smoking, according to another Pew report (Apr 8 2009) especially in the Millennial group, where 60% of people under thirty have never or hardly ever smoked. Non-smokers now count nearly 6 in 10 women to nearly half of all men. However, more men are kicking the habit than women, a cultural trend that associates smoking with work related stress. Women continue to take on higher paying yet more stressful positions.

Finding a mate with a better education, a better job and better health habits may seem like a tall order for a man in his twenties today, but the cultural stigma is lifting against the effort to try. My son and I both know there is no magic formula to a successful marriage, but finding a smart woman is a good start. If he doesn't believe me - he can always ask his father.