Ramblin' Round Single:
Marriage and Economics

March 4, 2007

The Washington Post today reported on the connection between marriage and wealth. Marriage is a luxury that is turning into a class marker:

Marriage has declined across all income groups, but it has declined far less among couples who make the most money and have the best education. These couples are also less likely to divorce. Many demographers peg the rise of a class-based marriage gap to the erosion since 1970 of the broad-based economic prosperity that followed World War II.

Among religious conservatives the decline is marriage is often taken as a sign of moral decline. The very idea that gays and lesbians could get married calls out the direst scenarios. The institution of marriage is commonly said to be "under attack". But look, if you want empirical evidence about the decline of marriage as the preferred option, that decline has everything to do with economic issues, specifically the rising gap between rich and poor:

"We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry and a great many others live together and have kids," said Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst for Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising firm.

Presumably that trend would be of concern to religious conservatives. But here is the irony: because these religious conservatives are so worried about issues like gay marriage, they are more than happy to align themselves with the corporate interests of this country under the tent of the Republican Party. Yet by strengthening the economic policies of this administration—which by all accounts is increasing income inequality—they strengthen the trends that are undermining marriage.

I find that amusing sometimes.. but then I remember real people who want to get married and make a go of life. The lines from the Woody Guthrie song "Ramblin' Round" strike me as a statement of the basic economic foundation of good things like marriage and children. Here are the lyrics as I remember them sung by Odetta:

I wish that I could marry,
Lord knows I wanna settle down,
But I caint save a penny
As I go a ramblin' 'round,
As I go a ramblin' 'round.

My mother prayed that I would be
A woman of some renown,
But I'm just a refugee
As I go a ramblin' 'round,
As I go a ramblin' 'round.

Sure if everyone could live with a house and car and security, they would love to get married and live that way too. A terrible error of religious conservatives is to mistake moral failure for economic instability.

Make no mistake: the alignment between religious conservatives and corporate/business interests will someday look like the greatest foolishness.. consider the economic policies they support:

• growing income gap between rich and poor
• growing expense of health insurance and the impossibility of affording it for millions of citizens
• encouragement of corporate system which causes high level of social mobility
• acquiescence in corporate system that maximizes shareholder profit at the expense of workers

I have trouble imagining a more anti-family set of policies. Sometimes, as if in a dream, I imagine religious conservatives thrashing around.. striking out against external foes that seem threatening, but by their movements only sinking deeper into the very moral hole they fear..