There was a time when the phrase "American family" conjured up a single, specific image: a breadwinner dad, a homemaker mom, and their 2.5 kids living comfortable lives in a middle-class suburb. Today, that image has been shattered, due in part to skyrocketing divorce rates, single parenthood, and increased out-of-wedlock births. But whether it is conservatives bewailing the wages of moral decline and women's liberation, or progressives celebrating the result of women's greater freedom and changing sexual mores, most Americans fail to identify the root factor driving the changes: economic inequality that is remaking the American family along class lines. In Marriage Markets , June Carbone and Naomi Cahn examine how macroeconomic forces are transforming our most intimate and important spheres, and how working class and lower income families have paid the highest price. Just like health, education, and seemingly every other advantage in life, a stable two-parent home has become a luxury that only the well-off can afford. The best educated and most prosperous have the most stable families, while working class families have seen the greatest increase in relationship instability. Why is this so? The book provides the answer: greater economic inequality has profoundly changed marriage markets, the way men and women match up when they search for a life partner. It has produced a larger group of high-income men than women; written off the men at the bottom because of chronic unemployment, incarceration, and substance abuse; and left a larger group of women with a smaller group of comparable men in the middle. The failure to see marriage as a market affected by supply and demand has obscured any meaningful analysis of the way that societal changes influence culture. Only policies that redress the balance between men and women through greater access to education, stable employment, and opportunities for social mobility can produce a culture that encourages commitment and investment in family life. A rigorous and enlightening account of why American families have changed so much in recent decades, Marriage Markets cuts through the ideological and moralistic rhetoric that drives our current debate. It offers critically needed solutions for a problem that will haunt America for generations to come. " Marriage Markets answers some of the most critical questions our society faces: what is happening to our families and what is happening to our economy? Why is the country growing apart economically at the same time some families are disintegrating? For those interested in these questions, the authors provide fresh analysis, new ideas and a path forward. This is an important book that should guide not only what we think about rising inequality but what we do about it."-Neera Tanden, President, Center for American Progress "A new kind of class chasm is opening in America, one defined not by money but by a widening gap between marital haves and have-nots. You can't understand where our country is headed, the changing nature of inequality, and why poor and working-class kids are losing out without reading this book. It's that simple."-Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution "Professors Carbone and Cahn have a knack for taking mountains of data from a wide variety of sources, distilling it into readable text, and developing unique theories that fit."-Margaret Brinig, Fritz Duda Family Chair in Law, Notre Dame Law School "Marriage is a political lightning rod, attracting the energy of both the left and right in the United States, but the energy released often provides more heat than light. Without examining marriage in the context of inequality, there is little hope of understanding where we've been, where we're headed, and what policy and the law can do to help those most vulnerable to the disruption, deprivation and dispossession that make life difficult for so many American families. In providing that context-with lucid prose and in-depth analysis-Carbone and Cahn provide a rich contribution to the debate over the past and future of marriage."-Philip N. Cohen, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park "A brutally realistic account of what wealth inequality has done to the American family. Diverse social practices-hook-up culture, college debt, women's economic advances-have resulted in stunningly class-based family patterns: little marriage at the bottom and hunky-dory arrangements at the top. The authors take on in concrete detail how family law must take account of the new structures of intimate life."-Carol Sanger, Barbara Aronstein Professor of Law, Columbia Law School "A crisp and cogent account - rich with detail and utterly free of legalese - of America's failure to invest in its children." - New York Times " Marriage Markets is a book worth reading, pondering and discussing." -Maggie Gallagher " Marriage Markets is an important book for lawyers, sociologists, and anyone