Social inequality’s deepening roots

Two years ago, Susan Patton, a Princeton graduate and mother of two sons who attended Princeton, detonated multiple explosions in the culture wars when, in a letter to the Daily Princetonian, she told “the young women of Princeton” what “you really need to know that nobody is telling you.” Which is that their future happiness will be “inextricably linked” to the men they marry, so they should “find a husband on campus” because “you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.” She explains:

“Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. . . . It will frustrate you to be with a man who just isn’t as smart as you.”

Patton’s brassy indifference to delicacy served the serious purpose of riveting attention on what social scientists call “assortative mating.” Plainly put, America has always aspired to be a meritocracy in which careers are open to talents and status is earned rather than inherited. But the more merit matters to upward mobility, the more inequality becomes entrenched in a stratified society.