Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on IHeartRadio.

When I started this show about a year plus ago, I would talk a lot about the importance of marriage.

I really wanted that to be one of the topics that I delved into on this program,

and it mattered to me that marriage rates were in such steep decline.

It was something that I was very concerned about.

I'm still very concerned about.

I think marriage is important for society and very beneficial to individuals.

You've likely heard all of the arguments here or maybe elsewhere.

I've made them extensively that married people are happier.

They're wealthier.

They're more stable.

All of the good things.

Healthier.

They have more sex.

What's not to like?

But as I talked about marriage, I kept looking at the data.

And what I started to see is not that people were coupling and just not getting married.

It's that they weren't coupling at all either.

That was in sharp decline as well.

There are a lot of explanations for why this is happening.

Women are overachieving but want men who are a lot of explanations for why this is happening. Women are overachieving, but want men who are a higher status than they are, a pool that is continually shrinking. And I'm not

blaming just men here for the decline of relationships, obviously. There's a lot of data that

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