紐約時報：為何富人比窮人更愛結婚？

為何富人比窮人更愛結婚？

By now it is common knowledge that professionals are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than are less educated workers. Among 20- to 49-year-old men in 2013, 56 percent of professional, managerial and technical workers were married, compared with 31 percent of service workers, according to the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau. Some people argue that the gap is largely a result of a decline in traditional values among working-class men, particularly whites who constitute the majority of them. Supposedly they are not as industrious in seeking employment as were their fathers and grandfathers and so fail to secure the steady jobs needed for marriage.

現在眾所周知，與受教育程度較低的就業(yè)人群相比，專業(yè)人士結婚的可能性更大，離婚的可能性更小。美國人口普查局(Census Bureau)的美國社區(qū)調查(American Community Survey)數據顯示，2013年20至49歲的男性中，56%的專業(yè)型、管理型和技術型職業(yè)人士已婚，而服務業(yè)從業(yè)人員的已婚者比例僅為31%。有人稱，兩者之間產生差距的原因主要是，工薪階層男性，特別是在這個階層中占多數的白人，對傳統(tǒng)價值觀的認同降低?？赡芩麄冊谇舐殨r不像父輩和祖父輩那么勤奮，所以未能找到婚姻所需要的穩(wěn)定工作。

But some digging into historical census records shows that social class differences in marriage have been tied to the extent of income inequality among white Americans for at least 130 years. They also suggest that commentators who insist that the marriage gap is wholly a matter of values are almost surely wrong.

但對歷史人口普查數據進行一些挖掘就會發(fā)現，在至少130年的時間里，婚姻方面的階層差異和美國白人當中的收入不平等程度相關。歷史數據還表明，堅持認為結婚率差距完全是價值觀問題的那些評論人士，幾乎可以肯定是搞錯了。

Census records, which have been compiled into the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series by demographers at the University of Minnesota, tell us that the current era is not the first time that the nation has experienced a large marriage gap; it is at least the second. Another instance occurred in the late 19th century. What these two eras have in common, according to the economists Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz and Robert A. Margo, is that economic inequality was high and rising during both of them.

明尼蘇達大學(University of Minnesota)的人口統(tǒng)計學家已將人口統(tǒng)計數據匯編進了“綜合公共利用微數據系列”(Integrated Public Use Microdata Series)。這些數據告訴我們，當今時代并非美國首次出現巨大的結婚率差距，至少是第二次。另一次出現在19世紀末?？藙诘蟻?middot;戈爾丁 (Claudia Goldin)、勞倫斯·F·卡茨(Lawrence F. Katz)和羅伯特·A·馬戈(Robert A. Margo)這三位經濟學家認為，這兩個時代的相同之處在于，經濟不平等居高不下且日益加劇。

The first marriage gap occurred between 1880 and 1910, during a period that Mark Twain labeled the Gilded Age. The growing industrial economy increased the number of managers and executives. The extension of schooling increased the demand for teachers. And the quadrupling of newspaper circulation between 1880 and 1900 increased the demand for editors and reporters. A white-collar professional class solidified its gains in the labor market and married in large numbers.

首次出現結婚率差距是在1880年至1910年期間。那個時期被馬克·吐溫(Mark Twain)形容為“鍍金時代”(Gilded Age)。不斷發(fā)展的工業(yè)經濟提高了中高層管理人員的總人數。學校教育的延長提升了對教師的需求。同時，1880年至1900年期間，報紙發(fā)行量翻了兩番，擴大了對編輯和記者的需求。白領專業(yè)人士在就業(yè)市場上的收益得到了鞏固，并且他們還大量走進婚姻。

At the same time, the fortunes of independent craftsmen and artisans declined as their small shops were replaced by large factories. Younger men who would have found positions as skilled apprentices and journeymen instead became low-paid industrial or service workers, and their marriage rates were modest.

與此同時，獨立工匠和手藝人的財富縮水，因為他們的小店鋪被大型工廠取代了。本可以找到熟練學徒和雇傭工崗位的年輕人，卻變成了低收入的工廠工人或服務業(yè)從業(yè)者。他們的結婚率較低。

In the past few decades, a period that some are calling the New Gilded Age, inequality has been high and rising again. Workers with bachelor’s degrees have seen their earnings far outpace those with less education. The middle of the labor market has hollowed out because of technological change. The offshoring of production has closed factory after factory. At the bottom, low-skilled service work has expanded, while at the top, an elite has captured an increasing share of income gains.

在被部分人稱作“新鍍金時代”的過去幾十年里，不平等再次居高不下并日漸加劇。有本科學歷的就業(yè)人群發(fā)現，自己的收入遠遠超過了受教育程度較低的人。因為技術變革，勞動力市場的中間部分被掏空了。生產流程外包導致一家又一家工廠倒閉。底層的低技能服務業(yè)從業(yè)者規(guī)模擴大，而頂層的精英人士在新增收入中所占的份額日漸增大。

Not coincidentally, we see high levels of marriage among young professionals today, although they may delay weddings until they have started a career.

并非巧合的是，我們發(fā)現，年輕的專業(yè)人士當中，結婚比例也較高，盡管他們可能會將婚禮推遲到事業(yè)開啟之后。

College-educated men and women are the privileged players in our transformed economy: They can pool two incomes and provide a solid financial foundation for a marriage. In contrast, we have seen declines in marriage among high school graduates who are stuck in the middle of the labor market, where they can no longer find the kind of steady, decently paying employment that supported their grandparents’ marriages.

在我們已經轉型的經濟中，接受過大學教育的人是處于優(yōu)勢地位的參與者：男女雙方可以獲得兩份收入，為婚姻提供堅實的經濟基礎。相比之下，我們發(fā)現，在僅有高中學歷的人群中，已婚人士的比例出現了下降。他們卡在了勞動力市場的夾層中，如今已經找不到祖輩那種穩(wěn)定而薪水體面、可以支撐婚姻的工作了。

What the census data demonstrate, then, is a strong association between the level of economic inequality and the level of marriage inequality. Since 1880, the marriage gap and the earnings gap have been correlated. In periods when wages were more unequal, so were marriage rates.

因此，人口普查數據所證明的，是經濟不平等與結婚率不平等之間的有力聯系。自1880年以來，結婚率差距和收入差距一直存在關聯。在工資水平差距更大的時代，結婚率的差距也會更顯著。

When inequality was low and stable during the prosperous post-World War II years, marriage rates were more similar and the proportions of married people reached historic high points for all groups.

在二戰(zhàn)后繁榮的年份中，貧富差距水平低而穩(wěn)定，結婚率也相差不大，所有群體中的已婚者比例都創(chuàng)下了歷史新高。

To be sure, the parallel movements of economic inequality and marriage inequality do not prove that the former causes the latter. But it is hard to look at the census figures and conclude that the state of the labor market has had nothing to do with the marriage gap among the middle class, the working class and the poor. Certainly, no one would argue that the large marriage gap during the first Gilded Age was caused by the reluctance of men to work hard. On the contrary, they labored long hours for wages so low that families were often able to subsist only by sending sons out to sell newspapers or having their daughters work as servants in other families’ homes.

當然，經濟差距和結婚率差距的變動趨于一致，并不能證明前者是后者的原因。不過，在看到人口普查的數據之后，很難相信就業(yè)市場的狀況與中產階級、工薪階層和窮人之間的結婚率差距無關。毫無疑問的是，沒人會認為，在第一次鍍金時代，結婚率的巨大差異是男性不愿意努力工作造成的。恰恰相反，他們工作的時間很長，工資水平卻非常低，常常要讓家中的男孩去賣報紙、女孩去別人家里當傭人，才能維持生計。

Moreover, the government social welfare programs that are often blamed for creating dependency among the poor, such as cash assistance for single parents, unemployment benefits and food stamps, did not start until the 1930s and therefore cannot be blamed for a marriage gap that existed a half-century earlier.

此外，人們常常把窮人中產生的差距歸咎于政府的社會福利項目，比如單親家庭的現金補貼、失業(yè)救濟和食品券。但這些福利項目是從上世紀30年代才開始的，因此在那之前半個世紀的結婚率差距，并不是由此造成的。

Yet, even if it has not been the major determinant of class differences in who marries, cultural change has been a factor in what unmarried people are doing.

不過，盡管文化變革并不是決定階級之間結婚率差距的主要因素，但它卻影響著未婚人士的生活狀態(tài)。

Single men and women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries rarely lived together without marrying, and very few had children. The social norms against cohabitation and childbearing outside of marriage were strong.

19世紀末和20世紀初，單身男女很少同居，幾乎沒人未婚生子。反對婚前同居和生子的社會規(guī)范十分強大。

During the past few generations, these norms have weakened. It is now commonplace for unmarried young adults to cohabit and broadly acceptable for them to have children. Unlike their ancestors in the late 1800s, many of today’s working-class young adults have responded to the difficulty of marrying by living with a partner and having children outside of marriage. We would not be seeing these trends if social norms about family formation had remained unchanged — even given the recent rise in income inequality.

而過去幾代人的時間里，這些規(guī)范已經弱化。如今，未婚男女同居的現象十分普遍，人們也廣泛認為未婚生子是可以接受的。與19世紀末的人不同，今天工薪階層的年輕人當中，許多人應對結婚難的辦法是，找個伴侶同居，不結婚就生育。如果關于家庭的社會規(guī)范一成不變，就不會出現這種趨勢，即使近年來收入不平等出現加劇。