Bachelors Without Bachelor's: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates

Over the past half-century, U.S. four-year colleges have shifted from enrolling mostly men to enrolling mostly women, while the economic position of non-college men has weakened markedly. We examine how these changes correspond with the evolving structure of marriage markets across cohorts and places. As college men have become increasingly scarce, college women have maintained stable marriage rates by marrying high-earning non-college men. This shift—combined with the broader economic decline of non-college men—has sharply reduced the pool of economically stable partners available to non-college women: the share of non-college men who earn above the national median and are not married to college women has fallen by more than 50%. Cross-area evidence shows that education gaps in marriage are smaller where non-college men face lower rates of joblessness and incarceration. Taken together, the evidence suggests that deteriorating outcomes for men have primarily undermined the marriage prospects of non-college women.