And evidently better for the adults.<\/p>\n
How's this for a journalistic coup?<\/p>\n
It's actually a comprehensive article with reams of data. And of course, some children of single parents do fine.<\/p>\n
Two Classes, Divided by \u2018I Do\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n The economic storms of recent years have raised concerns about growing inequality and questions about a core national faith, that even Americans of humble backgrounds have a good chance of getting ahead. Most of the discussion has focused on labor market forces like falling blue-collar wages and lavish Wall Street pay.<\/p>\n But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women like Ms. Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos.<\/p>\n Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns \u2014 as opposed to changes in individual earnings \u2014 may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,\u201d said Andrew Cherlin,<\/a> a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.<\/p>\n