Marriage is increasingly the big sociological divide in American life. Getting and staying married makes you part of a privileged elite. As Charles Murray documents in his 2012 book “Coming Apart,” that divide tracks the income divide, with low-income whites much less likely to be married than their high-income counterparts. (I criticized a different aspect of Murray’s book in this column.) The causality is debatable. Maybe poorer people have a harder time getting married. Maybe being married makes it easier to earn more. Maybe some third factor causes both phenomena. But what is clear is that you’re most likely to have a better life if you’re married — even if, it turns out, you get cancer.

Marriage is increasingly the big sociological divide in American life. Getting and staying married makes you part of a privileged elite.

As Charles Murray documents in his 2012 book “Coming Apart,” that divide tracks the income divide, with low-income whites much less likely to be married than their high-income counterparts. (I criticized a different aspect of Murray’s book in this column.) The causality is debatable. Maybe poorer people have a harder time getting married. Maybe being married makes it easier to earn more. Maybe some third factor causes both phenomena. But what is clear is that you’re most likely to have a better life if you’re married — even if, it turns out, you get cancer.

—Virginia Postrel (via ayjay)