U.S. college‑educated women marriage trends

A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper examined U.S. marriage patterns across birth cohorts from 1930 to 1980. It found that while college‑educated women’s marriage rates have stayed high, the pool of similarly educated men has shrunk, dropping the college‑educated male‑to‑female ratio from 1.8 to 0.8. Consequently, the share of marriages where the wife holds a four‑year degree and the husband does not rose from 2.3 % (1930 cohort) to 9.6 % (1980 cohort).

A follow‑up study by the same research team added that many of these non‑college husbands earn substantially more than comparable men without a degree, with average earnings of $68,400 versus $46,000. The authors project that over half of women without a college degree born in the mid‑1990s may remain unmarried by age 45, underscoring a shift in the U.S. marriage market driven by education imbalances and income dynamics.