When a survey popped this question: "Will you marry?" to 700 women
living with their boyfriends, one out of four responded, "I won't." And
it seems a man's earning power may affect a woman's decision to
wed.
Sociologists Pamela Smock, of the University of Michigan,
and Wendy Manning, of Bowling Green State University, found that
socioeconomic status is a key factor in a cohabitating woman's
expectation of marriage. An analysis of a survey of
family growth reveals that women living with men of lesser economic means
and lower levels of education were less likely to anticipate marrying
their current partner.
Smock explained that while the expectation of marriage is almost 80
percent for white and Hispanic women with high levels of education and
income who live with men of equally high socioeconomic standing, this
probability falls to 50 percent when women of this same status are paired
with men of low socioeconomic means. Among African-American women in this
same stratum, this probability drops from 70 percent to 42
percent.
Their study finds that
experience is also linked to a waning expectation of marriage. Smock and
Manning note that a woman who has been married prior to a live-in
relationship shows 59 percent lower odds of expecting to wed her current
partner; a woman who has cohabitated before is 49 percent less likely to
anticipate a walk down the aisle.
The findings come as the number of opposite-sex cohabitating
couples continues to climb from 1 million in the late '70s to 4.7 million
in this decade. Smock attributes this in part to a growing acceptance of
premarital sex.
