NEW STUDY

Men's Falling Incomes Linked to Single Parents

Research connects dip in salaries to the decline of two-parent households.

Men are earning less because more of them are raised by single mothers, argues MIT professor David Autor in a new analysis for the center-left research organization Third Way. Roughly 63 percent of children surveyed lived in a house with two parents in 2010, a stark contrast to the 82 percent who lived in two-parent households in 1970, and usually the single parent raising the children is female. Evidence increasingly shows that men raised by single mothers “appear to fare particularly poorly,” writes Autor, who notes that less successful men are less appealing to women. This leads more women to choose to raise kids on their own rather than with an unsuccessful partner, potentially sparking, as Autor suggests, “a vicious cycle.”