In sum, differences in employment, earnings, and wealth might account for a sizeable portion of the contemporary racial gap in marriage. Additionally, persistent patterns of racial stratification, such as high rates of residential segregation (which affects the accumulation of wealth, as well as school quality and young men’s risk of incarceration), combine with economic disadvantage to depress black marriage rates today. Yet we still don’t know why black marriage began to fall in the middle of the 20th century and why it continued to do so through good economic times and bad.
