The subtitle of the book is, “How the decline in marriage has increased inequality and lowered social mobility, and what we can do about it”.
By William Collins: Melissa Kearney is professor of economics at the University of Maryland. Her 2023 book The Two-Parent Privilege addresses the advantages to children of being raised in a family with both biological parents present – and, more specifically, the disadvantages to children being raised in single parent homes. She examines the causes of the hugely increased prevalence of single-mother families over the last 40 – 50 years. To do so she holds strictly to solid empirical data. With her background this mainly involves quantifiable “resources”, of which income is the most readily available. The data relates to the USA. However, the results will be broadly similar in the UK – with the exception of the race issues, which may be specific to the American context.
She identifies the main reason for the rise of single mother households being the decline of marriage rather than due to divorce (which, I note, is also true in the UK, see The Empathy Gap, section 13.3). Most single mothers were never married. Moreover she also emphasises that this decline of marriage is very strongly skewed to lower earners, which she aligns with those who do not have a four year college degree. This is again the same as in the UK (see The Empathy Gap, section 13.4). In the upper socioeconomic strata, marriage has declined only a little. The decline of marriage drives fatherlessness which in turn causes multiple disadvantages to their children see The Empathy Gap, chapter 14).