Reports And Briefings

How the Character of Men's Work Is Linked to Their Family Status

Introduction

Over the last half century, the U.S. economy has shifted, moving away from manufacturing and towards being an information and service economy. The mid-1980s, for instance, were punctuated by news of the closures of major steel manufacturers, including Homestead Works, Aliquippa Works, and Duquesne Works in Pittsburgh, PA, and Republic Works in Youngstown, OH. The closures were part and parcel of a period of massive deindustrialization. Between 1984 and 2004, the U.S. economy lost between 6 and 7 million manufacturing jobs that provided reliable and high-paying employment with good benefits for millions of working-class Americans.

The move away from manufacturing had a significant impact on America’s working class. Real wages of the median Americans with a high school diploma or less (a common measure of “working class”) declined by 11% between 1979 and 2019, while those of the median worker who had finished college increased by 15 percent. Many industrial communities, especially across America’s “Rust Belt,” experienced significant disinvestment and fell into blight. These economic shifts, both in the Rust Belt and nationwide, took a devastating toll. They pushed working-class men’s labor force participation down and led to declines in religious and secular expressions of community life in areas hit hardest by deindustrialization. Families not only broke apart but failed to form. In the wake of this economic dislocation and social breakdown, deaths of despair—that is, deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcoholism—surged among working-class women and especially men.

The transformation of the American economy has been especially impactful on working-class men. As manufacturing receded, employment in service industries surged, especially in healthcare, financial, and information services. Many of these service jobs require a college degree. And most of the significant growth in jobs that do not require a college degree has been concentrated in industries and occupations that are female dominated. Since 1990, the healthcare industry alone has added roughly 9 million jobs to the US economy. Nearly 80% of Americans who do not have a college degree and work in healthcare are women.nbsp;In fact, declines in real wages for working-class workers were concentrated among men; working-class women have seen their real wages rise since 1979.

Over this same period, Americans have also experienced a significant reduction in marriage and family stability. Since 1970, the marriage rate has fallen by more than 60% to the point where only about 1 in 2 adults are married. Declines in marriage and family stability have been especially precipitous for working-class Americans since 1980. For instance, only 39% of non-college-educated Americans ages 18-55 are married, compared to 58% of college-educated Americans.

Our hypothesis in this Institute for Family Studies (IFS) report is that the nature and character of work play a key role in affecting male marriageability. We contend that features of work like job stability, predictable hours, good benefits, and high pay help men to flourish and, in turn, elevate their appeal as husbands. Moreover, we note that class divides in marriage today are driven in part by differences in the character of work, with college-educated men generally benefiting, in terms of marriage and family formation, from jobs that are more stable, predictable, higher status, and remunerative. But we also suspect that the character of work varies among working-class men themselves, such that some jobs among working-class men are more likely to facilitate marriage and family formation than others.

In this report, we examine family formation among working-class men, defined here as men without college degrees, within the context of distinct employment environments. We also examine differences in married family formation rates—measured here in terms of being married with children at home—between working-class and college-educated men, and we investigate the extent to which these differences might be explained by differences in “good job” variables—primarily differences in pay, benefits, and stability. We then explore differences in the rates of married family formation among working-class men by industry and estimate the extent to which differences across industries are explained by the same “good job” variables. We conclude with a discussion of how public policies might better support working-class men in their jobs to improve their family prospects.

Introduction

The last quarter century has seen a dramatic increase in grade inflation on student report cards in elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the United States. So much so that a student’s grade point average (GPA), which was once as useful as SAT or ACT scores, has become almost worthless as a predictor of how well the student would do in college or graduate school. And high school graduation rates have continued climbing even as the 12th-Grade results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have remained stagnant or even declined. There has also been a notable decline in disciplinary actions by schools for student misconduct or lack of application.

Progressive education reformers have sought to make family background less of a determinant of how well a student does in school. Yet evidence from two nationwide household surveys of parents conducted nearly a quarter of a century apart demonstrate that family factors, such as marital stability, parent education, family income, and race and ethnicity, are as important as ever—or even more so

Housing is a core part of the family formation process, yet surprisingly little is known about what kinds of houses Americans want for their families. We remedy that gap in our recent report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, which presents evidence from a survey of nearly 9,000 Americans ages 18-54. 

Today, apartments as a share of home construction are at their highest level in decades. This is concerning since, as we show in Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, almost nobody in America wants to raise a family in an apartment. Our survey of almost 9,000 Americans finds a broad-spectrum rejection of apartment living across every single demographic group surveyed.

For decades, one of the dominant trends in American housing geography has been suburbanization, which has always been associated with public narratives around crime. In Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, our survey of almost 9,000 Americans finds that safety is the single most important factor shaping the housing decisions of young families. No amount of affordability or amenities will ever be enough to convince a family that a neighborhood where they feel unsafe is a great place to raise kids.  

Introduction

Our report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, presents evidence that local land-use regulations worsen housing affordability for young families. These regulations include: floor-area ratios set at very low levels, high parking requirements, height limits, and convoluted permitting processes. This fact sheet explores how land-use regulations affect housing affordability and fertility.  

Introduction

Our report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, highlights one set of policies that imperil housing affordability: urban growth boundaries. UGBs are rules or policies setting hard limits about where land can be developed, with development beyond those limits requiring hard-to-get special exemptions or permissions. In some areas, UGBs are impenetrable barriers, while in others they simply increase development cost and restrict how much housing can be built on undeveloped land. This fact sheet explores UGBs.

5 Recommendations for the White Houses's AI Action Plan

In times of revolutionary technological change such as our own, it is challenging to preserve and extol what is distinctly human. This is especially the case when the technological change is state-sponsored, as AI is becoming under the Trump Administration. In his recent executive order, President Trump stated that his administration seeks “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”²  We praise the Trump Administration for foregrounding human flourishing as a primary policy objective in its quest for AI superiority and for seeking to direct federal efforts to promote its advancement.

Though promoting human flourishing is first on the list of priorities for how to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance, much of the deepest thinking around AI has focused on the administration’s latter two policy goals, i.e., economic competitiveness and national security. While these three goals are fundamentally interrelated, human flourishing cannot be simply reduced to economic and military dominance.

Our comment seeks to offer guidance regarding the administration’s first AI policy goal: the promotion of human flourishing. As we and others have outlined in “A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right,” a statement that has garnered the support of dozens of eminent conservative leaders alongside prominent technologists, human flourishing depends on a culture of thriving families.³ The family begets human children, and it is unmatched in its natural ability to raise them to be healthy and productive. In other words, there can be no policy to promote human flourishing that does not have the objective of empowering and advancing the well-being of families. Conversely, any technological program that undermines the family is opposed to human flourishing. We echo Vice President Vance’s hope that AI can “make people more productive, more prosperous, and more free,” as he put it in his February 11, 2025, speech at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, France. But as the president’s executive order underscores, ensuring that human flourishing is advanced in the era of AI will require the government to make deliberate policy choices.

We recommend the following five policy actions: 1) establish the President’s Council on Technology and the Family; 2) require family impact and opportunity assessments; 3) incorporate a family-focused strategy and personnel in AI research and development; 4) balance automation with investments in job recovery and skill development; and 5) protect minors from AI-related harms.   

 

Abstract

American young adults face a housing affordability crisis far more severe than the crisis facing older Americans. Among young adults under age 35, homeownership rates have fallen by almost half since the 1970s, while the rate among older Americans has been comparatively stable. This young adult housing affordability crisis is a major factor suppressing rates of marriage and fertility in the United States, thus imperiling the health, happiness, and long-term demographic outlook for the entire country. Although the current plight of young families has many causes, local, regional, state, and federal housing policies have contributed in damaging ways. 

While our novel survey of over 8,000 Americans ages 18-54 reveals enormous pent-up demand for spacious, single-family housing in safe neighborhoods despite longer commutes or smaller yards, actual land-use regulations increasingly ban this kind of development. Urban growth boundaries prevent expansion into new greenfield developments, even as pro-development “Yes-In-My-Back-Yard” (YIMBY)-style policies focus almost exclusively on small housing units in large buildings, a housing type Americans almost uniformly dislike for their family in our representative survey.

In order to tackle falling fertility and marriage rates, policymakers must tackle restrictive housing policies, particularly those policies that prevent the construction of commercially-developed, efficiently-arranged, reasonably-priced single-family homes. To that end, this IFS report provides policy recommendations for every level of authority ranging from neighborhood HOAs to the federal government, with specific advice on how to ensure that government policies persistently create affordable housing for all Americans—especially young adults hoping to transition into family life.

What is the Family Structure Index?

The Family Structure Index is a measure of the most important family structure trends in the US, focusing on each state’s share of adult residents who are married, have children, and raise those children together through their high-school years.

How was the Index Calculated?

The index was calculated for each state by: 1) The percentage of married adults aged 25 to 54, 2) The average number of lifetime births per woman. 3) The percentage of children aged 15 to 17 who are living with their married parents.

What Does the Index Score Mean?

Index scores higher than 60 indicate that the state is above the national average in at least one of the components. Index scores lower than 60 mean the state is below average in at least one area