The State Of Our Unions: New Study Reports Growing 'Marriage Gap'

Affluent, well-educated Americans are enjoying increasingly stable, strong marriages, even as marital happiness is plummeting and the chances of divorce are rising among middle Americans. These are among the startling findings of "When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America," a new study released by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and New York's Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values.

The study, edited by W. Bradford Wilcox, brings together the latest findings from "The State Of Our Unions," an annual report produced jointly by the two organizations which monitors the health of "marriage and family life" in the U.S., with a focus on determining the ways "children, race, class, immigration, ethnicity, religion and poverty" shape marriage today. The results--culled from three nationally-representative surveys conducted between 1972 to 2008--paint a bleak picture for most American families. Perhaps the most alarming finding is the tangible shift in key markers of marriage stability among middle Americans, whom the study defines as the 58 percent of the adult population with high school, but not college degrees.

The study found that these adults are more likely to divorce now than they once were. Indeed, middle Americans have a 37 percent chance of divorce or

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