It should be obvious that developments within a social institution as fundamental as marriage will have an economic impact. Sorting out cause and effect in such cases is no easy matter, however; the temptation is to draw easy and simplistic connections. A suitably sophisticated analysis comes from Fr. John Flynn at Zenit. Flynn reports on a study by the National Marriage Project. Lots of interesting tidbits here, not all of them exclusively related to family issues. Among them: 75% of job losses during the current recession in the US have been concentrated among men without a college education; college-educated women are now more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than their less educated counterparts; extramarital affairs and alcohol/drug abuse are the only factors more strongly predictive of divorce than the feeling that one’s spouse is financially irresponsible.

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