经济学人下载:结婚吧,为了更富有、更聪明

There barely was a marriage gap in 1960: only four percentage points separated the wedded ways of college and high-school graduates (76% versus 72%). The gap has since widened to 16 percentage points, according to the Pew Research Centre. A Census Bureau analysis released this spring found that brides are significantly more likely to have a college degree than they were in the mid-1990s.

1960年结婚率几乎没有差别：大学毕业和高中毕业生的结婚率只相差4个百分点（分别为76%和72%）。佩尤研究中心（Pew Research Center）称这个差别已经到16%。今年春天，人口调查局发表的分析称新娘拥有一个大学学位的可能性比九十年代中期时大了很多。

“Marriage has become much more selective, and that’s why the divorce rate has come down,” said Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The project found that divorce rates for couples with college degrees are only a third as high as for those with a high-school degree.

位于夏洛茨维尔（Charlottesville）的弗吉尼亚大学的国家婚姻研究项目主任W. 布拉德福德．维尔科斯（W. Bradford Wilcox）称：“选择结婚对象时更加地精挑细选，这就是为什么离婚率降低了”。该研究项目发现双方都拥有大学学位的夫妇的离婚率是那些只有一方有高中学位夫妇的三分之一。

Americans with a high-school degree or less (who account for 58% of the population) tell researchers they would like to marry, but do not believe they can afford it. Instead, they raise children out of wedlock. Only 6% of children born to college-educated mothers were born outside marriage, according to the National Marriage Project. That compares with 44% of babies born to mothers whose education ended with high school.

学历为高中或更低水平的美国人（占总人口的58%）告诉研究者他们想结婚，但是认为自己不能承担婚姻的责任。于是，他们抚养非婚生子女。国家婚姻研究项目称接受过大学教育的母亲的子女中只有6%是非婚生。这个数字在母亲是高中毕业的子女中为44%。

“Less marriage means less income and more poverty,” reckons Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She and other researchers have linked as much as half of the income inequality in America to changes in family composition: single-parent families (mostly those with a high-school degree or less) are getting poorer while married couples (with educations and dual incomes) are increasingly well-off. “This is a striking gap that is not well understood by the public,” she says.

“婚姻减少意味着收入减少、贫困增加”， 布鲁金斯学会（Brookings Institution）的资深研究员伊莎贝尔▪索希尔（Isabel Sawhill）这样认为。她和其他研究者把美国收入不均的一半因素与家庭构成的变化联系在一起：单亲家庭（他们中的大多数只有高中或以下学历）越来越贫困而已婚夫妇（双方均受过高等教育且都有收入）越来越富有。她说：“这个差别非常明显但是却不为大众很好地理解”。

Do not expect the Democratic Party, however, to make an issue of the marriage gap in next year’s elections. Unmarried women voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. “You don’t want to suggest to someone who isn’t married and has children that they should be married,” says Ms Sawhill. “That is a denigration of their lifestyle.”

不过，别指望民主党在明年的选举中将婚姻差别做文章。未婚女性一边倒地支持奥巴马。“你别想建议某个没结婚又有小孩的人去结婚”，索希尔女士说，“那样子是对她们生活方式的诋毁。”