That’s the inequality in marriage rates between the upper-middle-class, and the lower and lower-middle classes. While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder. Unfortunately, the people who are foregoing marriage are probably the ones who need it most. …

So why don’t people get married now, who would have gotten married in the past? In part, because they don’t have to. Single motherhood (or fatherhood) is no longer looked down upon as it once was. Shotgun weddings are largely a thing of the past. Welfare payments and other social assistance can (partially) replace a father in the house. (When you subsidize something, you get more of it — and we’re subsidizing unmarried mothers). And, for people of both sexes, but especially for men, marriage appears to be a much less attractive deal than it once was. …

The problem, though, is that the kids do worse. A government check isn’t a substitute for a father, and while plenty of single-mom kids do fine, most tend to do worse on measures ranging from educational attainment and future income to criminality. And the process feeds on itself: Women want “marriageable” men — those with good incomes and stable lifestyles — but the more single-parent households there are, the fewer men are likely to be “marriageable” in the next generation. Government programs like Head Start don’t make up the slack, because no institution can invest the amount of time and energy in a kid that his or her parents can.