This article in the Washington monthly discusses something I've been aware of for a long time (via census data and years of lived experience), but can only guess at the reasons for.

Marriage rates have precipitously declined in the USA, but the educated/wealthy demographic is not where most of the losses are coming from. Upper class people still have their children within the framework of marriage, reaping all the benefits of that. Meanwhile, people without college degrees or the cultural capital of being raised by married parents generally aspire to marriage (according to the researchers), but are not realizing that aspiration.

The authors of this article have ideas about how to "fix" the marriage gap, some of which seem sensible, and some of which seem to regard men in a solely utilitarian light. I have no quarrel with utilitarian sociology, but surely we can come up with better policy suggestions for men if we consider the issue primarily from the perspective of men who want to be "marriageable" but currently aren't.

So, from a men's-rights angle, what are your thoughts on the marriage gap? Do you believe the data? Do you think the benefits of the end of marriage culture outweigh the costs in the long-term, and that the upper classes will eventually abandon marriage as well? Assuming that stable two-parent homes are a social goal worth striving for, what kinds of social policies would best help men who are not upper class, but aspire nonetheless to be husbands and fathers?