| As America's wealth gap worsens, family life is disintegrating for two-thirds of adults, mostly those with less education, according to a study released by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
Pew Research says marriage is fading among all Americans, especially the less-educated and blacks.
The ratio of couples who live together without marriage has multiplied 14 times since 1960, from a half-million to 7 million. The number of divorced people has quadrupled.
Pew says that two-thirds of college-educated adults today are married, but just 47 percent of those with less education.
They say most high school graduates and dropouts are losing the ability to support families with few available jobs.
Right now there are five unemployed workers for each job opening in West Virginia, with Washington much too busy blaming each other rather than working on solutions.
The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.
Marriage remains fairly secure among college-educated couples, the affluent top 30 percent, said director Bradford Wilcox.
He said wedlock is dying in "middle America," the 58 percent with just high school diplomas, and also among high school dropouts, the bottom 12 percent.
What a dismal situation: Loss of jobs and income not only inflicts poverty on average Americans, but also hurts their children's chances of growing up in stable, two-parent homes.
"When Marriage Disappears," the title of a major report by UVA sociologists. It warns that two-thirds of Americans, those with high school education or less, face decaying home life, "with all the attendant problems of economic stress, partner conflict, single-parenting and troubled children."
"The retreat from marriage in Middle America cuts deeply into the nation's hopes and dreams. ... It is likely that we will witness the emergence of a new society."
For a substantial share of the United States, economic mobility will be out of reach, their children's life chances will diminish, and large numbers of young men will live apart from the civilizing power of married life."
This social transformation is altering mainstream America.
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