It’s 2016, and the age of “marrying up” is over. In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in “assortative mating,” where people marry other people like themselves. In the past, women were encouraged to seek out potential breadwinners to marry. However, as more women started earning college degrees, building careers and marrying later in life, they looked for love and compatibility in marriage instead of just the highest salary.
According to the The New York Times, while this change in marital tradition seems awesome, it’s also having some unforseen consequences. With the existence of “power couples” on the rise in the U.S., the class divide between rich and poor has been widening.
So why is this change in marriage behavior happening? According to research cited in the Times, when you want to marry someone you enjoy hanging out with, that usually leads to marrying someone who’s a lot like you. They’ll probably have a similar education background, as well as similar career aspirations. And if you’re both educated and ambitious, you’re likely to end up making a lot of money.
What does this mean? Well, it means society has to take a hard look at gender norms as women start earning more money than their husbands. And it also means thinking seriously about income inequality, as rich power couples end up passing their wealth along to their children, creating an even more stratified society. Marriage equality is a positive change, but we’ve also got to think about what other areas of society it’s affecting, and what we can do to mitigate any new inequality it might be creating.