Reply #8: This column has quite a few insights

[camero]

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/28/News/Marriage_is_tougher_w.shtml


Marriage has been in the news lately for its scarcity. More than half of all women in our country are now sans spouse. It's enough to make a wedding planner sob into her taffeta.

This slow demise of marriage - down nearly 50 percent since 1970 - has a number of culprits. Americans are waiting longer to get hitched, are living together without benefit of marriage and, of course, are divorcing at a high rate.

This is old news. Mine the marriages statistics deeper, and you'll unearth a much more remarkable fact: Better-off couples are half as likely to divorce. Families with annual incomes over $50,000 have a 31 percent chance of divorce after 15 years, according to a study by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, whereas families with incomes below $25,000 have a 65 percent chance of divorce.

Income predicts divorce with great accuracy. The numbers suggest that a key variable in family stability is less cultural or sociological - less about personal values - than about basic economics.

It is hard to get along when you can't get by.

Money pressures can create assholes. Some are just assholes. Go figure.