[T]he number of married adults has declined from 72 percent fifty years ago to about half today.
“These shifts are intimately connected to the reordering of economic institutions that once underpinned middle and working-class family life,” NBC reports. “As industrial sector and professional jobs that a half a century ago provided men with enough income to support a family disappear, so has the attachment to marriage as a prerequisite for an economically stable life.”
People are just not making as much today as they were in years past. The cost of living is growing dramatically, between gas and food, and salaries are stagnant.