My friend Courtney Knapp recently noted the following from the Pew Research Center’s DataBank:

About half (52%) of all adults in this country were married in 2008; back in 1960, seven-in-ten (72%) were. This decline has occurred along class lines. In 2008, a 16-percentage-point gap separated marriage rates of college graduates (64%) and of those with a high school diploma or less (48%). In 1960, this gap had been just four percentage points (76% vs. 72%). The Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends project finds that those with a high school diploma or less are just as likely as those with a college degree to say they want to marry. But they place a higher premium than college graduates (38% vs. 21%) on financial stability as a very important reason to marry.

We often talk about the impact of policy uncertainty on firms, and one gets the sense that marital and family instability has similarly doleful effects on the propensity towards risk-taking and investment in human capital. If you’re going back to school, it helps to have someone you can trust to look after the kids.