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Wedlock is more rewarding than ever—and also more upmarket. That is a problem.

MARRIAGE idealises permanence, and yet it is changing more rapidly than at any time in its history. Almost everywhere it is becoming freer, more equal and more satisfying. As our special report this week explains, wedlock has become so good that it is causing trouble.

The most benign changes are taking place in poor and middle-income countries (where most people live). Child marriage, once rife, is ebbing. So is cousin marriage, with its attendant risk of genetic defects, though it is still fairly common in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Relations between husbands and wives have become more equal (though not equal enough). As women earn more and the stigma of divorce fades, more men are finding that they cannot treat their wives as servants (or, worse, punchbags), because women can credibly threaten to walk away.

In some regions change has been astoundingly quick. In India the share of women marrying by the age of 18 has dropped from 47% to 27% in a single decade. “Love marriages” remain disreputable in India, and arranged marriages the norm. But, as in many traditional societies, young people have more say. Some can veto the mates their families suggest; others choose their own, subject to a parental veto. Across the world, popular culture is raising expectations of what a good marriage is like, and dating websites are giving singletons vastly more options.

Ring the changes

The worrying part is what is going on in rich countries. In the West marriage is in excellent shape, but only among the well-off. Elite couples delay tying the knot to allow time to get established in a career, but they still tie it before having children. Working-class people, by contrast, are dramatically less likely to put a ring before a cradle than in previous generations. Among the college-educated in America, only 12% of births are to unmarried mothers; among those who dropped out of high school, the rate is 70%, up from 43% in the early 1980s. Similar trends can be seen across the wealthy world: the average out-of-wedlock birth rate for OECD countries is 40%.

If marriage were just a piece of paper this would not matter. However, it is much more than that. Although a wedding cannot turn a flimsy relationship into a strong one, it adds scaffolding that can save one that is in between. Making a public, lifelong commitment to another person is not the same as drifting into cohabitation to share the rent. And this matters a lot if children are involved. One study in America found that 18% of married couples broke up within five years of a birth, compared with 47% of cohabiting couples.

Children from stable backgrounds tend to do better in school and life—and are more likely to form stable unions of their own. Add the trend towards “assortative mating”, when high-achievers marry other high-achievers, and the gap between elite and working-class families yawns. Affluent parents intensively nurture their children for success; the offspring of less fortunate homes fall far behind before they ever set foot in a school. The marriage gap makes rich countries more unequal, and retards social mobility.

Improbable as it may seem, this pattern is likely to reach every corner of the globe. The forces that have shaken up marriage in rich countries—rising individualism, education, women’s economic emancipation—are spreading. It is not just a Western trend. For a long time Japan resisted it: highly educated women were less likely to marry than others. Now they are more likely to (and less likely to divorce).

The revolution in family life is largely beneficial, and there is not much that governments can do about its harmful side-effects. America has tried hard to promote wedlock among poor people since the 1990s, but failed utterly. Countries should try to ensure that their welfare systems do not penalise marriage among the poor. They should not, however, lurch in the other direction by providing tax benefits to the married. Given the growing social stratification of marriage, such measures are exceedingly regressive.

Working-class Westerners have not given up on marriage. On the contrary, many idealise it. Rather than seeing it as the start of a couple’s journey together, as in the past, they often see it as something not to try until they arrive—with a good job, a house, financial stability and a lavish party. Many feel they are not “ready” to marry, even as they embark on parenthood. Helpfully, some European countries have begun to offer civil unions for heterosexuals. (Gay couples already had that option.) They confer nearly all the rights of marriage but entail less of the intimidating hoopla. These now account for a fifth of new formal unions in the Netherlands, and more in some working-class districts. They have not undermined marriage so far. It is a small fix for a huge problem, but it might help.

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