Liberals Suddenly Realize Their Attack On Marriage And The Family Has Consequences

Instapundit links to a rather modest proposal by Discriminations that notes that Democrats, Ruth Marcus liberal Washington Post opinion writer among them, are now upset about the decline in marriage. Marcus is concerned that

If current trends hold, within a few years, less than half the U.S. adult population will be married. This precipitous decline isn’t just a social problem. It’s also an economic problem.

Specifically, it’s an income-inequality and economic-mobility problem. The steadily dropping marriage rate both contributes to income inequality and further entrenches it.

She goes on to write:

Nor does the marriage gap seem destined to lessen. Pew found that 27 percent of those with college degrees say they consider marriage “obsolete.” But 45 percent of those with a high school diploma or less took that view.

A different arm of Pew, its Economic Mobility Project, found that among children who started in the bottom third of income, only one-fourth of those with divorced parents moved up to the middle or top third as adults. By comparison, half of children with continuously married parents — and, somewhat surprisingly, 42 percent of those born to unmarried mothers — moved up the income ladder as adults.

Is marriage a magic-bullet solution to the broader problem of income inequality and lack of economic mobility? No, but fewer marriages will mean more inequality. Neither development is healthy.

In other words, leftists are bemoaning the economic results (and still trying to ignoring the social consequences) of their decades long attack on the institution or marriage and the family.

They're reaping the economic results of what they have sown.