This is a summary of the working paper “Bachelors Without Bachelor’s: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates” by Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman, and Joseph Winkelmann. You can read the full paper in SSRN. 

Gender Gaps in College: What Do They Mean for Marriage?

There are currently 1.6 million more women than men enrolled in four-year colleges and universities in the United States. These gender gaps in college attendance are now larger than they were in 1972—the year Title IX was enacted—but in the opposite direction. An emerging narrative suggests that declines in marriage rates, historically concentrated among Americans without college degrees, may soon extend to college-educated women as it becomes increasingly difficult for them to find equally educated partners. In our new paper, we explore this concern using both historical trends and recent data on marriage markets across various regions of the U.S.

College Grads Are Much More Likely to Marry Each Other

Figure 1

The concern that marriage—and possibly fertility—might decline among college-educated women stems partly from their historical tendency to marry men with a BA rather than those without one. Even so, only about 50% of college-educated women marry a college-educated man, while roughly a quarter remain single and another quarter marry men without a college degree. Despite significant shifts in the gender composition of college attendees, Figure 1 shows that these marriage patterns for college-educated women have remained remarkably stable when comparing women born in 1930 to those born in 1980, with marriage measured at age 45.

Marriage Is Declining Among Women Without a BA, Not Those With One

Figure 2

The stable marriage outcomes for college-educated women sharply contrast with the significant decline in marriage rates among women without a BA over the past half-century. Among women born in 1930, there was no education gap in marriage rates. Since then, a nearly 20 percentage point gap has emerged, with college-educated women now significantly more likely to marry. This pattern remains consistent when marriage is measured at different ages or based on whether women ever marry, rather than at a specific age.

College Women Marry Non-College Men With Good Earnings

Figure 3

At first glance, these patterns seem counterintuitive given trends in education by gender. Marriage rates for college-educated women remain stable, even as their primary partners—college-educated men—become relatively scarce. Meanwhile, marriage rates for non-college women have sharply declined, despite an increasing relative supply of their primary partners, non-college men.

College-educated women have sustained stable marriage rates by increasingly “marrying down” in education, partnering with men without college degrees. However, this doesn’t equate to marrying men with poor economic prospects. While economic outcomes for men without college degrees have broadly declined, Figure 3 shows that the subset of non-college men who marry college-educated women have stable or improving economic prospects. In contrast, the economic decline is concentrated among non-college men who remain unmarried to college-educated women, posing a growing challenge for the marriage prospects of non-college women.

In Areas Where Men Do Better, Marriage Rates Rise for Women from Low-Income Families

Figure 4

Historical data show that when men’s educational and economic outcomes decline, it is women without a college degree who experience the sharpest declines in marriage rates. This pattern is also evident when examining metro area-level differences across the U.S. Using data from Opportunity Insights on children born between 1978 and 1983, we evaluate how class gaps in marriage rates relate to differences in men’s outcomes across commuting zones.

Consistent with historical trends, we find that improvements in outcomes for men from lower-income backgrounds lead to significant increases in marriage rates among women from similar backgrounds. In contrast, marriage rates for women from higher-income backgrounds are less sensitive to these changes. This effect is particularly pronounced for “left-tail” outcomes, such as non-employment and incarceration. In areas where men from lower-income backgrounds have the lowest rates of joblessness and incarceration, class gaps in marriage shrink by over 50%.

Focus on Working-Class Men and Women, Not the College-Educated

College-educated women continue to marry at high rates, with little to no decline in recent decades. This stability partly reflects their willingness to marry men without college degrees, provided those men have strong economic prospects. In contrast, marriage rates have sharply declined among women without a college degree—and, by extension, among men with lower education levels and weaker economic outcomes. This has created a significant class gap in marriage rates, with important implications for both inequality and intergenerational mobility.

Our research indicates that improving economic opportunities for men without a college degree could substantially increase marriage rates, particularly in poorer communities and among non-college-educated women. Concerns about declining marriage rates among college-educated women are misplaced; the real challenge lies in addressing the struggles of working-class men and women.