Transcripts For CSPAN After 20240703

It is a pleasure to have this conversation with you. Good to be with you. We are here to discuss your book. Ricans stopped getting married and started falling behind behind. Excellent book. Why dont we start off just by having you tell our viewers about your professional background and interests . What led you to write the book . Sure so i am an economist. Ive been the economics faculty at the University Maryland for 17 years now before that i trained at mit. Ive long been interested in these types of issues related to inequality and poverty, the economics of families and Child Wellbeing in the us. How i came to write this book was ive been studying these issues for 20 years and. It has become abundantly clear to me that what has happened to Family Structure in the us, the dramatic change in the way kids are being raised in the us in terms of the increase in the share of kids living with only one parent, thats, you know, more than one in five kids in the us now, more than in any other in the world, its become so clear to me that this is really a part of whats driving differences in the in the us. Its not been good for kids wellbeing and their economic trajectories. Its not been good for the Single Parents who are bearing the burdens by themselves. And so i come at the issue very much as an economist thinking resources in the household. But ultimately i decided to this book because it felt like the conversations weve been having, you and i have been in many of them together, about all the sorts of policy ways we could address Child Poverty and growing inequality and undermining, you know, undermine social mobility. They were focused on basically everything, Family Structure, improving schools, shoring up the safety, improving labor market institutions, all these things that im all. But i felt like we werent really talking about. One of the key drivers, which was basically whats happened to Family Structure in the us. And so thats how we came to write the book. Yeah, ill just cite some stats from the book. One in five kids today lives with a single mother meaning no husband, no spouse, no living partner presence. If you add the children of single fathers in there, that puts the share at about one in four. Looks like about two thirds of kids live with two married parents. Theyre not necessarily their biological parents. A little bit less than two thirds of kids live with their biological parents, whether married or not. If things always been like this. No, this has really been a dramatic change in the past 40 years. A lot. And most of the change honestly happened in the 1980s and nineties and towards ends. Things have stabilized somewhat the past ten years. But this is really dramatic decline. And so in you know, in 1980, it was closer to something more than percent of kids lived with married parents. And now thats down to just above 60 . So a dramatic drop just in 40 years and has occurred among kind of evenly among all segments of society no. And this is a this is a theme running throughout my this is really theres been whats really emerged over the past 40 years is this quite shocking and dramatic education class gap and kids family in particular whats is that College Educated an already advantaged group in our society right parents are already bringing in high levels income. They have continued to get married and have their in, you know, raise their kids, married, two parent homes, the share of nonmarital among College Educated mothers really hasnt increased much. So theres only been a very small decline in the share of kids born to educated mothers living with married parents over these 40 years. Thats dropped about six Percentage Points from. 90 to 84 . Whats happened is that outside the College Educated, there has been a dramatic in the share of kids living with two parents. The large just decline has been the middle of the education. So, you know, im speaking here about moms with a High School Degree or some college and they comprise now 52 , 52 of kids now have moms in that lets call the middle education group. So High School Grads not the most disadvantaged, not teen moms either the share of their living with two parents thats fallen Percentage Points over this 40 year period. And interestingly, the share of kids in that sort of, you know, middle educated, high school educated mom group thats living with parents that fell from 80 to close to 60 . And so now the wide gap really between College Educated and everybody else, whereas back in the 1980s, people started to call attention to the fact that among the most disadvantaged groups, teen moms, moms without a High School Degree, there was a high share of Single Parents among single mothers, among that group. And now youve had a huge increase in the share of those kids with single mothers and the middle group has converged downward. And so weve got this real big friction between College Educated moms or the kids of College Educated moms and everybody else. And thats really what im calling attention to in the book is this divergence Family Structure is yet another way that the College Educated class is pulling from everyone else but you. I would say in a good way. The shame is that more kids are finding themselves without access to two parents in the home and. All of the resources that that converge. Its really striking now that having parents in a sense really is a privileges title alludes to at this point and you sort of alluded to it earlier the us is an outlier in terms the trends weve experienced, it sounds like. Yeah the us is an outlier. We have, you know, like you said, more, you know, one in five kids live with just a partnered mom or than in four kids live with a non partnered parent if we include the dads, this is really just dramatically higher than that. 7 average around the world. You know the uk is close second behind us. The european. 13 of kids live with one parent. So its a little bit of a misconception that some people have, which is, oh, in the us were moving away from marriage, but now were just like more european parents are more likely to cohabit and fact of the matter is cohabitation rates are quite low in the us among parents and even among a mom and her cohabiting partner or a dad and his cohabiting. As as you mentioned, those are many. Those are not actually the childs both biological parents. Cohabitation is its a little its its largely unstable among parents very few cohabiting Stay Together throughout a childs childhood the cohabiting is often in about 25 to 40 of the cases, not the childs second parent. All of this is very different than the situation with cohabitation parents in europe. But even with that its just, you know, way more kids in the us live with one parent than anywhere else. And what we can talk in a moment about kind of what the evidence says about this, but we get get there. Why it matter whether a child grows up with with one or two parents . What are what are some of the reasons why . One situation on average be better or worse . Yeah, let me. Let me stipulate before i get into the reasons why that it is a bunch innately clear in the data that kids from married parent or two parent homes have Better Outcomes and also just the language thing i keep going back and forth between married parent and two parent because as we were just saying in the us, those are really linked, right . So married parents often means have two parents and unmarried parents typically means you dont. And so im using those a bit interchangeably. But so the data is abundantly clear that kids from married parent homes do better. And then the question is well, how much of that is just because married . Parents are more likely to be an advantaged group anyway, that theyre more likely to be highly educated, higher income. And so, you know, obviously, the first thing we want to do is compare across lets just look at the outcomes for kids, whether they have a married or unmarried mother and, you know, lets make sure were looking across moms that are the same education levels, same etc. , same race. And so we see these big differences, kids outcomes, even conditional on that and then researchers have done a lot other more sophisticated things try and really narrow down the parents marital status or the number of parents in the households and so the evidence is pretty overwhelming. We know that kids do better. Okay. So then the question is, and what do i mean by do better theyre less likely to live in poverty, more likely to graduate high school, theyre more likely graduate college, theyre more likely to have higher earnings and be married themselves adulthood. Theyre less likely to get in trouble in school. Theyre less likely to be involved in the criminal justice system, whole host of outcomes. So then the question is why . And a big part of it unsurprising only is income differences, right . And so one of the things that a married or two parent home tends do is have a second parent in the household with capacity. And so just as a matter of simple math, two parents tend to bring in more income. One parent alone and you look at the Median Income of, you know, single mother households, married parent households, its about 2 to 1. Right. So you remember the majority of moms now. So its also not surprising that two parent household tends to have twice as much income and. Income is really protective to kids. It affords a lot of opportunities. We know this right . We know this. We have lots of evidence this. So income is a big part of the story but its not the whole story. A second parent in the household. I mean, i see this in the data, but you and i both know this is parents. Anyone has kids would tell you kids also take a lot of time and we see that kids who live in two parent or married parent households, they have parental time. So the extent we think that parent parental time with kids is an investment its an investment in their Human Capital you know developmental psychologist about the way parents spend their time with kids and in ways foster their development and their needs at different. We just see that kids are married homes are more likely to get those parental time inputs and a third sort of mechanism that think is really important and that theres evidence in favor of is we see kids who live in married parent homes are more likely to get exposure to the type of parenting that Development Psychologist would is is developmentally appropriate and nurturing and beneficial. And you know again i want to i think its really important here to say that i dont see evidence suggesting to me people will say this, but i i sort of dont see the evidence in favor of this line of argument as strong at all. I dont see evidence suggesting that parents across different age groups or marital status necessarily want to parent differently, have strong, strongly different ideas about parenting or, have different views about whether time with their kids or reading to their kids is more or less beneficial. Theres a lot of survey evidence, suggestive evidence that parents, you know, sort of want to do the same things read to their kids, invest, you to spend time with their kids, but if you have two parents in the household, its easier to do it. And so i refer to this in the book and you know, others refer to this in the literature as as bandwidth or less stress in the household. And, you know, if you look at theories of the family theres nuanced differences, emotional bandwidth and toxic stress. But just colloquially speaking, we can stipulate, i think, that single parent households have higher levels of stress, less emotional bandwidth. Right. Again, im thinking here of really compelling evidence, studies and surveys. But as i think most of us would relate to this, you come home from the work day, youre stressed out, you might be stressed out about something in your head, whether you can pay bill, etc. Its hard to be patient with your kid and sit down and read with your kid and people who have a second parent in the house to share of those burdens with or read or are more readily able to do that. And so i think its, you know, to just sort of encapsulate i think theres three key buckets of mechanisms we can think about as to why two parent, mary, parent homes deliver benefits and advan t just home environment to kids. Theres more income, theres more time and theres more emotional bandwidth. Yeah that makes lot of sense. I was thinking as i was reading it, ive, you know, ive sort of had shared custody with a daughter now whos entering the teenage. And another factor there is having two sets of eyes on kids rather one set of eyes, really basic things like that. I think that that kind of intuitively seemed really so so you would say to folks who might argue that that these resources that you focus on arent as important as you say, that its sort of intrinsic traits of more resource parents and kids. You dont see that in the research that youve done this is this really interesting, a lot of social are really reluctant to concede that its married parents or having a second parent in the house thats particularly beneficial and i am and im not sure what i think this isnt doing exactly what they intend to be doing because. I think the intention of lot of social scientists who dont want to concede is to not suggest, you know, people dont want to judge other peoples choices. Right. And so people dont to say, oh, well, its marriage or Something Else. And so then youre left with no, its you know, if reject that and you reject the purpose endurance of descriptive and observation and all studies on this because. Well lets get into whats going on in this sort of science. We dont have a randomized controlled trial, never will where we randomly assign some kids to live with married parents and others. And so once we dont have that randomized controlled trial we cant perfectly nail the causal identification that this marriage or this is having two parents as opposed to Something Else. Now we can see that kids from married parents do better and we can see that once we sort account for all these other things, those gaps go away. Right . So so we can see the mechanisms through which marriage having two parents would confer these benefits. But but still, you know, to the extent that we those things go away, we adjust for them and theres still some remaining gaps. People want to say, oh, its probably not the second parent. Its something about the single parent, such that even if they had another contributing person in the house their kids would still be disadvantaged. And not only do i not see evidence for im just not really willing to basically write off the Single Parents and say that, oh, gosh, even if they had all these other resources, a second person, they just cant intrinsically deliver the type parenting thats conducive to child success the way these unobservable Higher Quality people are who get married. Right. So leaning hard into the unobserved differences. But, you know, it strikes me as an odd thing to be doing and one thats not supported in the data. And i dont and i think in some senses the opposite of what most of us are inclined to do, which is acknowledge the difficulty of the circumstance is of Single Parents, rather than say its something intrinsic about them. The other why, you know, some people are reluctant to say, oh, it its its the fact of being married really helpful. And this i think is a is an important point even if some of those Single Parents married or partnered with the father those of their children you wouldnt the average boost that you would expect from an average marriage because that dad would not be contributing so much to the house. Right. And so this is a really important point because on we know that, you know, basically married parents able to confer a lot of benefits to their kid. But that doesnt tell us about what would happen in any individual case. And so it really depends on any individual case, on what the second parent would bring into the house and so i actually i have a, you know, i have a paper with the living and we wrote in 2017. Its the annual review of economics. And we we write about this marriage premium for kids and we acknowledge this underlying you know the economists term for this is heterogeneity really. Its like variation in what we would expect the marriage premium would be for kids given the different contextual factors, how many resources the mom has by herself, what the second parent would bring, and then what outcome were talking about. And so let me be very if i can. So for example, if were talking about two teenage parents, neither one of them graduated high school, neither one of them has very job prospects, even if they were to be married, they might still struggle to be able to, lets say, their kid through high school. Right. Theres still might be a lot of resource deficits in their household if were talking about a 35 year old mom with an mba. If she were to have a child on her own, she could keep their child out of poverty, you know, could get the child through high school. But because her partner is descriptively like on average, probably highly educated male, because we, you know, theres a lot of assorted of mating the extra income that would be and the extra that we would, you know, put he would bring into that household might be enough to get the kid through college because we actually you know, its not until you get to kids two highly educated married parents that we have a large share of them graduating college and the the the benefit to the kid from having the additional income in the household really depends the moms baseline. What the partner would bring and then what outcome talking about interestingly largest you know going back to something we said earlier the largest decrease in married parents has been in the middle group among parents with a High School Education and this is actually where the gaps in kids outcomes outside of poverty college seem to be largest and. This you know we see this in the data it fits our model but it also makes intuitive sense. So think about high school educated mom. You know lets say shes. 35,000 a year on her own and. She has a child with a dad with a High School Level education. Hes making 35,000. She could probably keep the kid out of Child Poverty by herself, but a one, you know, a household with two working parents bringing in a combined 70,000, thats a very different situation than a household with one parent bringing in 35,000. And thats where we see like almost the largest gaps in whether a kid graduates high school, what earnings they have in adulthood. And so i think its just important to think, you know, averages mask a lot and and theres individuals circumstances that would determine whether an individual situation would be beneficial kids. But if we look at the pattern theyre very consistent with a research framework. And to explain it away by saying its something underlying and unobserved the single parent once recognize these patterns you to tell a pretty convoluted is to say that its something other than the benefits a second parent brings into the household. Yeah. If i thought your study was really clever. Its a its a great example of starting with theoretical framework and figuring a Research Design that will let you see whether true or not. And then and then taking the evidence as it comes. I do think a couple other really interesting studies that i like a lot that maybe get out little bit outside of your resource framework, just mention them really quick. One was done i think in sweden and it looked at kids of divorce where the divorce happened because their dad was in an office that was a little bit more imbalanced in favor of women than of men and therefore there was more opportunity for an extramarital affair happen. Clever design so terrible. Right, yeah right. Its an awful apple. Come on, guys gun shots. Kids know women around. And so, you know, for those for those kids. The study found that the effects of divorce were really negative, which you can imagine. You know maybe these are kids who are in in a marriage that you know, as far as they know, their parents are doing fine. And this is sort of a big disruption and shock. What, you know, what was sort of a stable childhood the other study thats kind of an interesting opposite of that was done by keith and david neumark. And they essentially find that kids end up being only by their mom because. They live in a state where conditional on their dad being convicted of a crime, he goes to prison. Those kids end up being worse off growing up with a single mom than if, you know, under the counterfactual they had grown up with with their dad in the picture too and that makes sense to in some regards know with a lot of these guys on average you know that went to the that were of a crime and went to prison might not have been the dads as well so i that that i think goes a bit beyond sort of your resource argument. But yeah, no. Well it goes i try to use the term resource very broadly in the sense that i dont just income right. I actually think these two studies are right on point to of the stuff i talk about in in the book i talk about to different studies of parents convicted of of crime to make this point exactly what you just said which is if the second parent would be harmful right then thats a situation where, you know, think about what what are what are the resources the parent would into the house. Well, in that case, it would be it would be instability. It would be these would be negative things. And that child, again data shows like really clever show that like lets just take you know two parents are convicted of the same crime one happens to be randomly assigned a judge with a higher propensity to send, you know, someone convicted of that crime to prison. Two different studies have used that kind of design and that its beneficial to the kids that. That actually helps make the point really clearly that its not in all cases that kids would be better off. And we certainly dont want to go back to a situation where were stigmatizing single parenthood. So that people feel they have no choice but to leave abusive or harmful marriages or partnerships. And so thats a really important point. I didnt know about that study about divorce, but its actually also, you know, really important to thinking about the marginal versus average. And so what is happening in those that study where you just mentioned . Well they are the divorce you know seems have been instigated by an extramarital affair as opposed to obvious conflict in the house. And one of the lines of pushback, i often is, you know this of course, this is terrible that your openly lamenting the decline in marriage because a lot of marriages are unhappy. And i think this raises an uncommon, terrible question. And this is beyond the scope of what i am an expert on or what i write about. This raises a really important question about when actually is better for the kid. You know, and weve gone so far in the direction of couples being together that have kids together. Right. I mean, 40 of kids in this country are born outside of a marital union. Its not that. And 40 of those cases, the partner would be violent or abusive. Right. Were so far beyond extreme cases that we have to ask the question, have we gone so far that maybe partnerships wouldnt have been gloriously happy or, you know, the parents be phenomenally and silently in love, like every day. But maybe that stability in Additional Resources be beneficial to kids. And i think you know thats a difficult conversation to have and nobody you know likes to question individual freedom and choices in of happiness and i would just somebody has to be thinking about the kids right and in some sense like we see that kids do better when they have two parents stable together except in these situations where its very a harmful or extreme case and then and then the kids do better when that second parent isnt in the household. Yep, absolutely. I, i fully agree that 40 of my of my biological sex are not terrible parents open to debate about the what the right person. Yeah. However, it is probably are between zero and 40 and there would be wide disagreement about which end its closer to right. This brings a little bit to this question of of men and of boys i think i think your book is well positioned to be maybe the most important policy book of this fall, probably most important policy book of last fall. Scott was absolutely. Yeah, it was was a book by richard reeves, who we both know and our friends called the boys and men where. He chronicles the sort of ways that boys and men are falling behind girls and women. Interestingly, i he sort of skirted over the possibility that that single parenthood could affect boys differently than girls. But you tackle that in a chapter of your book, say more, about the differential impact of growing up with, a single mother for boys and. Girls. Yeah, let me say i love richards book and i. I think hes done a really important thing here by highlighting the struggles of boys and he does in a very and a very adeptly making sure to not lamented the wonderful advances that women and have made right and but so hes right say hey weve done all this women are doing theyre going to college at higher rates. This great but hold on and lets at whats happening to boys and theyre getting in trouble more at school they are now less likely to go to college than young women are graduating high school. Theres all sorts of ways boys are behind. Youre exactly right, though. I actually link this very explicitly to the fact that so of them are growing up without dads in their and i think breaking this cycle of fatherless homes is actually really a critical thing we have to do to improve the situation. Boys in this country. And so again i think this will make common, you know, well feel like common sense to most people that having a role model, a loving role model, you know, a loving male role model in the house is probably pretty good for most boys. But we see this in the data. So theres been some really compelling work on this. Let me highlight two such studies, one by Marianne Bertrand and jessica. And they have, you know, a lot of administrative records on kids. Theyve pulled together. They look at kids school and their home environment for neighborhood characteristic and what theyre focused on is trying to explain the gender gap, the gender gap. Now in schools favoring girls, meaning that boys are much more likely to get suspended in school. Thats start with that. Right. Theyre more likely to go to school and lash out in ways, gets them in trouble. And and by the way, getting in trouble in school, getting suspended kinds of things spiral. Youre less likely to finish school youre more likely to wind up involved the criminal justice system. So its a meaningful metric and outcome and what they find is the gender gap by which boys are you know, extra likely to get in trouble at school that larger among kids growing up in mother only households as compared to married households. And so what that say that says you know boys theyre more likely to get in theres an additional boost to the likelihood that they get in trouble as compared to girls from very similar home environments, including their sisters. So if you look at sisters and brothers, theyre more likely to get in trouble than girls extra. So if they have a dad in their house, then the researchers go further than just documenting that really striking findings showing you know disparate impacts of Family Structures on boys and girls and they and get into the mechanisms of whats going on you and i we spoke earlier in this hour about what are some of the differences in parental resources and inputs we see across households with married or Single Parents they do find that are some differences that you know boys growing up in single mother homes get less time from their mom theyre more likely to get harsh parenting from their mom as compared to boys and to parent homes. But the driver is that of gender differences is that boys particularly sensitive to this inputs. I think this is really i found this interesting so the way i think about this is if you know i have i have two daughters and a son. If i ignore my son or if im really harsh, my son, hes a you know that that same if i if i sort of you know reduce my spent with both my son and my daughter and more harsh with both of them. Its going have a bigger impact on whether my lashes out or whether he gets in trouble at school. And so boys are just particularly sensitive to. Those inputs. I want to be careful because in the that i dont i think we be very careful to not say that girls struggling but we know from like you know the Development Psychology literature we know that on average when girls are struggling theyre more likely internalize theyre unhappiness or their anxiety. The fact that boys more likely to engage in externalizing that, that means theyre more likely get in trouble in school. And that has all sorts of negative consequences. And so even though it might be more consequential in our sort of educational system and on their economic trajectory for boys, i just want to be careful to not it sound like were suggesting girls arent struggling. They might just be struggling in different ways that have different consequences but dont sort of derail their educational performance as much yeah. Oh sorry, there was a second study about why boys, about boys. So this one is the aggregate level study by raj chetty and the Opportunity Team out of harvard. This is at a neighborhood level forum and the study you probably know which im thinking of, im thinking of the one that looks at racial gaps in outcomes between. Men, you know, lets say black and white boys when they grow up into adulthood and single biggest predictor of a small color gap in adulthood between, black and white boys, when theyre adults, is the share of the share of homes with a black present in their neighborhood. And this is this is super interesting this is beyond the benefits an individual child from having their father in the house having more homes black family homes black dads is particularly helpful for black boys in that neighborhood. And then the you know, tragedy here in a statistical sense, then they show what small share of black boys in the us are growing up in low poverty, with a majority of black dads in the neighborhood. But. But their study really i also reveals the importance of having around for boys trajectories. Yeah and i think the neat thing about that study you know lot of studies like that you see some correlation between something the neighborhood and kids outcomes and and people say thats a causal factor its the thing about the neighborhood that were looking at that caused the kid to do better or do worse and you know, lots of times its just not that thats the case in this study. The interesting thing is is that the having more resident black fathers helps black boys if im right not black girls and not white boys and having more White Fathers at home doesnt help black boys. So its this very specific it seems impact that seems more plausible than sort of just a general claim about neighborhood composition. Sometimes folks make i, i still think its hard. You write that the the my recollection is there is you know having way dads is helpful not as helpful as the black dads which fits this idea that youre getting at, which is this seems like its really tightly right. I mean, theres still the issue of like you could never get around this again. People really dont want to lean into dads. You know, maybe its Something Else that in neighborhoods where black dads around is, you know, one of the other 20, its not one of the other 20 things they thought of it some unobservable thing we cant think of. But again, this is just one of those of the many studies my mind that like its very very, very suggestive. And at some point we have to stop ignoring all the suggestions coming up with other stories that we cant name but are probably a bigger factor. Yeah, absolutely. Well, now time left. I want to get to policy before we wrap up but but also lets look at the of this increase in parenthood. I think of all many of your many of our viewers you know, kind of might assume that this is either due to rising divorce or to rising teen pregnancy, for instance, drew. Now, i know so in a very mechanical sense, what is driving this is the reduction in marriage and specifically the reduction marriage among parents and the way describe it is weve experi and again outside the College Educated class in america a d bundling of marriage from having and raising kids. Right so this is driven an increase in the share of kids who are not born to married parents and their parents dont on to get married. And so thats how we got in this situation and of so many kids living with one parent divorce conditional on marriage is down and and actually now you even see if you just look at the share of kids with un partnered mothers a small majority of them got there through being married where in 1980 that was not the case 1980 on partnered mothers were much more likely to have gotten in that position. Divorce now you know again outside the College Educated class, theyre likely to have gotten in that situation, never being married. And then the other remarkable thing is teen births are way down, right . Theyve fallen over 70 since the mid 1990s. So if you told me in 1990 that teen births were to plummet by as much as they did, and that births to women in their young were going to fall by as much as their dad, i would have predicted a decrease in the share of kids living in single parent homes, because those were the groups where we really a concentration of single mother homes but births among groups have decreased and thats been more than offset an increase in nonmarital childbearing and single mother homes outside of those groups like all groups and thats really whats driving this and i think thats really important again just that doesnt get to the underlying causes but mechanically knowing what were talking about is really important. Making divorce is not really going to turn this putting more emphasis on expanded access to contraception for teenagers. Thats not really going to turn around because those arent the driving factors. Yeah. And will sort of get to the root causes, which i think will lead into policy as well. So as youre well aware of academic debate, debates about inequality often sort of turn on three possible broad. Theres economics, theres kind of culture and theres policy you lean heavily on economics. Whats your argument here the book for that for why economic changes have led to changes in the family. Yeah i think its really an interaction economics and a shift in social. So let me explain. Let me explain why. So lets take a step back. We focus on the fact that what im talking about, these trends have really happened in. The eighties and nineties, 2000, and theyve sort of stabilized, but theyre not reversing in the sixties and seventies, we had massive social or cultural changes, you know, shifted emphasis on marriage and gender. And so during the sixties and seventies, what we saw was that marriage decreased across the board, right . For everybody a bit College Educated, high school educated, less than high school educated. And then what happened in the eighties is that the decline in marriage really stabilized among the College Educated class and and it kept falling everybody else. And so now College Educated women are actually the most likely to be married and College Educated mothers are by far the most likely mothers be married. And so, you know, this is where i lean into economics to explain why did things keep changing outside the College Educated class . Well, what diverged in the eighties and nineties was really the Economic Situation between College Educated adults and everyone else mean. You and i have had many conversations about this in Broad Strokes College Workers continue to do well in the labor market. Their earnings continue to rise steadily. I meanwhile, nonCollege Workers, weve seen employment rates over the past 30 years fall among noncollege men. Weve seen their wages stagnate. Lets say i know people debate on exactly what happened, but they they stagnated. They fell relative to women. And so i lean into the economic view marriage here and stipulate that the economic of marriage for adults outside the College Educated class somewhat eroded from these changing economic circumstances, men became less reliable economic contributors and less financially important relative to what women could bring on their own. And, you know, there there are a number of studies lead me to this conclusion, that theres a causal chain there, that places that experienced in employment and earnings for nonCollege Educated men in a causal sense, then saw a reduction in marriage and increase in the share of kids living in single parent households in that were dominated by industries that you know, where the National Trends were such that men did less well those places than women. We see a reduction in marriage a rise in kids living single parent households. So i think there is a causal effect happening there. But then theres also a give and take with with the social norms. So the more the social norm or im tying together a marriage and childbearing is eroded and then the economic of the marriage proposition in those affected populations, you sort of get stuck in a spiral. And now, you know, i think its going to take and this is different than what i said ten years ago about this topic. Its to take both economic changes and a shift in social norms to reverse these trends outside. The noncollege outside the College Educated class. Part of what has changed my mind on this is that, you know, i was i was pretty swayed by this idea that the reduction in the marriage marriageable man from an Economic Framework led me to the conclusion of we really have to build up the Economic Security an opportune and the ability to be providers of men in more communities. And that will sort of naturally lead to a turnaround in marriage rates and a reduction the nonmarital per share. Then i wrote a study with my colleague riley wilson where we exploited this marriageable men possibility, which is the fracking boom, which you know, lets set aside any environmental, these localized fracking around the country outside of north and south dakota where it was like a migrant situation throughout the rest of the country. This these really led to localized income booms. And these were really good for local economies in way that particularly was beneficial nonCollege Educated men. So we showed that places where they just happen to be located over you know the right geology that they take advantage of this new technology. They had this local fracking boom earnings and employment among nonCollege Educated men up both in an absolute sense and relative to women. We run our analysis im expecting to see a reduction in the nonmarital birth share and you dont get that at all. You get that theres more kids because we actually have a bunch evidence showing that when people get this, you know, shock, more income people, use some of that to have more kids because kids are expensive they have more kids. We see the same effect on the likelihood of having a kid among married and unmarried folks. No increase in marriage, no reduction in the nonmarital birth share. So then we because this was surprising we we speculating maybe this is about the social norms in this environment we do see that the increase births among nonmarried parents is larger in places that already had more nonmarital births at the baseline. We look back in the seventies and eighties what happened during very coal boom shock there you find only an increase in married births. You see an increase in marriage. You see reduction in the nonmarital pressure that is suggestive to me that how people respond to their Economic Situations is on the social paradigm. So thats why i think its both its both social and economic a so i want to push a couple of areas in terms of your causal story. Once yesterday, the Census Bureau released new income measures, those included of earnings and, median mens earnings by the Census Bureaus numbers are 12 higher last year than they were in 1979. So and i think your own numbers, you know in the book show, as you said, stagnates maybe among those the lowest educated folks, small decline in earnings, but certainly not not a decline. Thats kind of the same magnitude as the changes in the family. Do we think that this and it matters policy right if we think that declining ability is about men doing worse, thats a difference calls for a different set of policy than if we think its not that men are doing worse but theyre just women are doing much better. Do you have thoughts on the difference between either of those being true . Does it affect how you think about policy . Yeah. So its so two things. Remember a lot of this decrease in marriage increase in nonmetro childbearing really happened in the eighties and nineties in 2000 and has stalled out. So if you know if men are doing better both in a relative absolute sense over the past ten years, that would be consider stint with the sort of, you know, a stopping the bottom falling out here. Right . A stopping this downward trend. Its really hard to tease out how much of this is men doing worse in an absolute versus relative. And and i cant that out the other thing i really cant say anything about is how this is being driven by men womens decision. Right so so we see an equilibrium right. And what do we see in the real theres fewer partnerships. How much of that is because the women decide that the man wouldnt contribute enough. Shes better off doing this on the own or the or the man deciding, you know what . Like, i dont want that responsibility. I dont feel secure enough. I dont want that pressure. I cant say which one is driving it, you know. But but i think its, you know, the Value Proposition of marriage from both sides is reduced if men are either viewed as or themselves or view themselves as less able or willing to be financial providers. And i dont think, you know, any improvement in men circumstances over the past five or ten years. Um, is inconsistent with this idea, that theres this sort of, you know, these economic changes in the eighties and nineties and 2000 sort of got the whole ball rolling or kept the ball rolling. This direction. You know, you didnt push back in this. Scott but others would push back on me with this Old Fashioned notion, including richard reeves, this Old Fashioned that men have to be breadwinners. Yeah, right. Yes. That you will not hear me. Push back. Okay. However, will push back on what other economists are probably anticipating. I think make a strong point at some point in the book that the gains to marriage for women depend kind of on the outside option. And so since women can, you know, are in more occupations that are higher paying these days, are able to support more, are able to support themselves on their own and that affects kind of how the decision to marry or not marry looks. Another thing has changed over time is that the safety net has gotten quite a bit more generous. Not so much with cash, Welfare Benefits as you talk about in the book, but with everything else, theres theres been a big expansion over 40, 50 years. You sort of are dismissive of the idea that that the generosity of the state could have played a role in some of these declines in marriage over time what you say to to to those those arguments. I think. Well, yeah, yeah. So so so just for any viewers who arent as steeped in this as you and i are, so its you know, i think we both agree on the facts here of what happened to the safety net cash welfare has become much less generous and much harder to access. And you know, and we see just in terms of what share of single moms are getting any cash benefits, its like 6 have cash benefits from tanf. Right so we need to move away from stereotype harmful characterization from the eighties that single moms are running around relying welfare or cash welfare. Right. Thats just not thats just not the case. 80 of, you know, on average 80 of income coming into a single home is from her own earnings. So 6 get tanf. Another single digit percent gets ssi. So cash welfare is harder to access must generate. But your but i but to your point a majority are on medicaid. So Health Insurance has become much easier to access and food stamps and food stamps have 40 , i think have food stamp income coming into the house. So my view on this is theres been dozens, hundreds of studies on the link between the generosity of safety net programs and family. You know, ive written some those papers, you know, my read is there is the link in the direction wed hypothesize, which is that as welfare is more generous, there is some small increase. The likelihood that someone as a single mom in terms of magnitudes, you know, my read of that evidence is the magnitudes are very small, so i dont deny a link. There, but the magnitudes are so small that theyre not with driving the trends over time. So, so casual for her. Certainly become much less generous, harder to access at the same time as single motherhood has become much more common. Its also become much more common among populations that are less reliant on welfare and. So thats why i reject this idea that. Oh, this is all reflective of of a generous welfare system. Let me concede some points here to the other side. If we didnt have welfare reform in 96 making it harder to access cash benefits, really emphasizing requirements for work, would we have had an even increase in in single motherhood, nonmarital childbearing . I think totally possible. Right. So ill ill grant that. I am also convinced that taking Health Insurance away from millions us children, will not meaningfully turn around rates of marriage among parents. And so this is why i reject these calls to. Well, if the safety net in the us was even less generous, then then wed solve this problem, right . And so even if im willing to grant that some people on the margin might be more inclined, have a nonmarital birth or be a single, because theres some measure of basic support out there. I dont its a major driver and i dont think. Making the safety net more stingy is to meaningfully turn around things. Okay, weve got just a few minutes left. Tell us what you think would make a difference in terms of policy, either reverse the trends or stabilize the ones that are still getting. Yeah, i think you know what im really hoping to accomplish with this book and what i really strongly about is that we need to consider this issue of class gaps in family. The really high share of kids in the us in one parent we need to take this as a policy matter with policy and thats thats actually not thats not as you know thats actually pretty strong statement to be making even if it might not sound like that because i think the fact that weve been collectively as a group of people who talk about policy write about policy, weve been collectively reluctant to take on family in the policy domain means that its just gotten short shrift. And so we spend very little on programs on research trying figure out how to help strengthen families. And so i do think establishing this as a policy urgency is important once we do that, then i think we should have, you know, a much more dedicated attention public dollars, private dollars Community Innovation in programs aimed at strengthening. You know, i think, again, this is this is a position that many will disagree with . I think need to reestablish a social norm, acknowledging that two parent families are beneficial to kids how we reestablish social norms that, you know, you get you move further from things in the economist policy toolkit. But social messaging matters what role models say matters, what say matters. The messages are just imbibed from media and entertainment mediums. They matter and then you know we need to get to the root causes so you know social changes being them but also the economic it changes because you and i havent rejected idea that men and fathers should still be breadwinners. I do think like recognizing that that that have faced many in the labor market have spilled over into the family sphere, leaving many kids growing up without a dad in their home really emphasizes the urgency of of all of the policy things we talk about to improve the Economic Security of nonCollege Educated men right the book is to parent privilege. Americans stopped getting married and started falling behind. Thank you very much. Months so this is as expected a great conversation i learned a lot from reading the book and i do think its going to do very, very well this fall. Thanks