Recently, we've been hearing that fewer and fewer Americans are tying the knot, with the U.S. marriage rate at its lowest point in more than a century. Now, a new study looks at why one group of Americans -- the working class -- is putting off or forgoing marriage altogether.
Researchers found that working-class men and women cited lack of job security, resources and low wages as reasons deterring them from tying the knot.
"Working-class people with insecure work and few resources, little stability and no ability to plan for a foreseeable future become concerned with their own survival and often become unable to imagine being able to provide materially and emotionally for others," lead researcher Sarah Corse -- an associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville -- told The Telegraph. "Insecure work changes peoples' non-work lives."
Researchers also noted that middle-class people were able to invest more time and money into their relationships through things like therapy sessions and date nights, whereas working-class Americans were not.
The not-yet-published study, entitled "Intimate Inequalities: Love and Work in a Post-Industrial Landscape," was presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York. Researchers interviewed 300 working- and middle-class Americans to gauge how their job status played into their relationships.
Click through the slideshow below for more interesting findings about marriage.
