Recently, some papers have suggested that assortative mating has a role to play in household income inequality. Empirically, it has been found that the proportion of couples who share the same level of schooling has been growing over the past few decades. This has been accompanied by a rise in household income inequality. A paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank found that changing family structure accounted for 52 percent of the increase in the 50-10 ratio (50th percentile to 10th percentile) and 49 percent of the increase in the 95-5 ratio. Research by Harvard economists, Chetty et al. concludes that the single strongest correlate of upward economic mobility across geographic regions of America is the fraction of children living in single-parent families.
The bedroom: the final frontier in the Progressive Crusade for Equality at all Costs.
If I try to think very rationally about this I have to, ask aren’t people effectively to a certain extent spending some income to be free from spouses they prefer not to be married to?