Study shows working-class men aren’t getting married

Gord Magill, who has worked as a trucker for 27 years, didn’t get married until he was 34. He said the nature of his job—being on the road for six months at a time—made it harder to find a spouse.

He and his wife of 12 years now live in upstate New York and have two children. “I guess it worked because my wife is a pretty independent gal,” he said.

A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies found that working-class men marry and form families at a lower rate than college-educated men. Magill’s industry, trucking, has a higher family formation rate than other working-class jobs. “You have to have a strong personality to deal with the adversity of life on the road, and that just sort of weeds out a lot of losers,” he said.

According to the Institute for Family Studies, just 36% of working-class men in 2021 were married with children, compared with 45% of college-educated men. They also cohabit with their partner and children at three times the rate of men with a college education, according to the study, though college-educated men are slightly more likely to live with a partner and no children. Job stability, benefits, and wages help explain the difference, but there are also other issues at play.

For example, since 1979, wages for working-class men have declined by 11%.

“Even though a lot has changed … in the last half-century, it is still the case that women tend to prefer men who are reliable bread-winners,” said Brad Wilcox, director of the Get Married Initiative for the Institute for Family Studies and professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. “Therefore, it’s a challenge now that a large minority of men are not stably attached to the labor force, and that really makes it harder for them to get and stay married.”

At the same time, wages for working-class women have risen since 1979. This creates a “mutually reinforcing” pattern where it’s harder for working-class men to find both full-time work and a spouse, said Grant Martsolf, a University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing professor who co-wrote the study on family formation with Wilcox. He said that research shows men in this economic bracket experience poorer mental health, lower levels of happiness, and less investment in relationships.

The study defined a “good job” as one with an individual income of over $60,000 per year, health insurance, and full-time employment for a full year. Jobs with all three of those increase family formation by 17 percentage points. These characteristics explain nearly 80% of the difference in working-class and college-educated men’s family formation rates, according to the study.

The roots of the trend also lie in the social sphere. College provides social connection and community during a critical time of young adulthood, and many eventual marriages result from college relationships. Men who don’t attend college tend to lack community. Turning instead to online connections, it is easier for young men to be isolated, decreasing the likelihood that they will get married and start families.

Brandon Daily, a tradesman in Pennsylvania, said his job as a building equipment technician for the gas station chain Sheetz could support his getting married but added he has challenges based on his location.

“I live where most people have left. I don’t really have a huge social group,” he said, adding, “I could work this job and have a family, I’m pretty confident.”

Creating more social opportunities in working-class communities would help increase family formation through community participation in group gatherings, nonprofits, and churches.

Some working-class fields have higher marriage rates, which the study’s authors attribute to the personalities of men drawn to the Armed forces or to fields such as public order and safety. These careers have the highest levels of family formation rates, with the Armed Forces at 69.8% and public order and safety at 54.16%.

Improving economic opportunities for working-class men would increase marriage rates in poorer communities and improve stability for low-income households, according to another study released in February by Cornell University researchers.

Wilcox of the Get Married Initiative believes public schools do a poor job of educating boys, and he also listed the loss of pro-social masculinity in culture as a contributing element. “There’s a variety of factors—cultural, economic, governmental—that are eroding young men’s capacity to flourish in school and the workplace today,” he said.

While young men can earn higher incomes in skilled trades, those other factors can hold them back. They might not have technical competence or experience with tools because they grew up without strong examples of successful blue-collar workers.

Helping young men apprentice and train is becoming more important because there will soon be a shortage of skilled working-class laborers, Wilcox said.

Developing technical skills will give men an advantage in the labor market, Martsolf pointed out. “That’s an enormous part of it, as well, is really committing to [be] father, mentor figures for young boys to mentor them into the trades,” he said.