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Hello and welcome to The Spectator Podcast. I'm Laura Prendergast and on this week's episode,

we'll be discussing whether marriage is becoming an elite institution.

We'll also be looking at whether the Tory's glass is half full or half empty and will be lamenting the loss of Britain's tiniest train lines.

The royal marriage has brightened up 2017. But is marriage now the preserve of royals and the rich?

This week's cover story looks at the new marriage gap

and why weddings are out of fashion but only at the bottom of the social scale.

I'm now joined by Frank Young, head of the family policy unit for the Centre for Social Justice,

and Rosie Will be, a comedian and the author of Is Monogamy Dead.

So Frank, in Ed's piece he you refers to something called the marriage gap.

Can you explain to us what that is?

Well, the marriage gap is simply that we have a situation in the UK today

where there's enormous inequality around marriage,

where broadly, middle and high earners, those on around 43,000 or more,

almost all of them get married,

around 87%. For people on lower incomes under £16,000, only 24% of those couples get married.

So there's a huge inequality associated with marriage in this country, and that in essence is the marriage gap.

And why is that? What are the benefits of getting married if you are higher up the social scale?

Well the benefits for middle class couples are savings essentially in your day-to-day lives.

I mean, literally you have the costs associated with living.

So there are huge economic pulls for marriage for middle class couples on salaried incomes for people and couples who are in receipt of tax credits and benefits. That

doesn't exist and there's what's called a couple penalty which has almost the opposite effect.

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