Its a pleasure to have this conversation with you. Yeah, its good to be with scott. Were here to discuss your great new book, the two parent privilege how americans stopped getting married and started falling behind behind. Excellent book. Why dont we start off just by having you tell our viewers about your professional background and interests . What led you to write the book . Sure so i am an economist. Ive been the economics faculty at the University Maryland for 17 years now before that i trained at mit. Ive long been interested in these types of issues related to inequality and poverty, the economics of families and Child Wellbeing in the us. How i came to write this book was ive been studying these issues for 20 years and. It has become abundantly clear to me that what has happened to Family Structure in the us, the dramatic change in the way kids are being raised in the us in terms of the increase in the share of kids living with only one parent, thats, you know, more than one in five kids in the us now, more than in any other in the world, its become so clear to me that this is really a part of whats driving differences in the in the us. Its not been good for kids wellbeing and their economic trajectories. Its not been good for the Single Parents who are bearing the burdens by themselves. And so i come at the issue very much as an economist thinking resources in the household. But ultimately i decided to this book because it felt like the conversations weve been having, you and i have been in many of them together, about all the sorts of policy ways we could address Child Poverty and growing inequality and undermining, you know, undermine social mobility. They were focused on basically everything, Family Structure, improving schools, shoring up the safety, improving labor market institutions, all these things that im all. But i felt like we werent really talking about. One of the key drivers, which was basically whats happened to Family Structure in the us. And so thats how we came to write the book. Yeah, ill just cite some stats from the book. One in five kids today lives with a single mother meaning no husband, no spouse, no living partner presence. If you add the children of single fathers in there, that puts the share at about one in four. Looks like about two thirds of kids live with two married parents. Theyre not necessarily their biological parents. A little bit less than two thirds of kids live with their biological parents, whether married or not. If things always been like this. No, this has really been a dramatic change in the past 40 years. A lot. And most of the change honestly happened in the 1980s and nineties and towards ends. Things have stabilized somewhat the past ten years. But this is really dramatic decline. And so in you know, in 1980, it was closer to something more than percent of kids lived with married parents. And now thats down to just above 60 . So a dramatic drop just in 40 years and has occurred among kind of evenly among all segments of society no. And this is a this is a theme running throughout my this is really theres been whats really emerged over the past 40 years is this quite shocking and dramatic education class gap and kids family in particular whats is that College Educated an already advantaged group in our society right parents are already bringing in high levels income. They have continued to get married and have their in, you know, raise their kids, married, two parent homes, the share of nonmarital among College Educated mothers really hasnt increased much. So theres only been a very small decline in the share of kids born to educated mothers living with married parents over these 40 years. Thats dropped about six Percentage Points from. 90 to 84 . Whats happened is that outside the College Educated, there has been a dramatic in the share of kids living with two parents. The large just decline has been the middle of the education. So, you know, im speaking here about moms with a High School Degree or some college and they comprise now 52 , 52 of kids now have moms in that lets call the middle education group. So High School Grads not the most disadvantaged, not teen moms either the share of their living with two parents thats fallen Percentage Points over this 40 year period. And interestingly, the share of kids in that sort of, you know, middle educated, high school educated mom group thats living with parents that fell from 80 to close to 60 . And so now the wide gap really between College Educated and everybody else, whereas back in the 1980s, people started to call attention to the fact that among the most disadvantaged groups, teen moms, moms without a High School Degree, there was a high share of Single Parents among single mothers, among that group. And now youve had a huge increase in the share of those kids with single mothers and the middle group has converged downward. And so weve got this real big friction between College Educated moms or the kids of College Educated moms and everybody else. And thats really what im calling attention to in the book is this divergence Family Structure is yet another way that the College Educated class is pulling from everyone else but you. I would say in a good way. The shame is that more kids are finding themselves without access to two parents in the home and. All of the resources that that converge. Its really striking now that having parents in a sense really is a privileges title alludes to at this point and you sort of alluded to it earlier the us is an outlier in terms the trends weve experienced, it sounds like. Yeah the us is an outlier. We have, you know, like you said, more, you know, one in five kids live with just a partnered mom or than in four kids live with a non partnered parent if we include the dads, this is really just dramatically higher than that. 7 average around the world. You know the uk is close second behind us. The european. 13 of kids live with one parent. So its a little bit of a misconception that some people have, which is, oh, in the us were moving away from marriage, but now were just like more european parents are more likely to cohabit and fact of the matter is cohabitation rates are quite low in the us among parents and even among a mom and her cohabiting partner or a dad and his cohabiting. As as you mentioned, those are many. Those are not actually the childs both biological parents. Cohabitation is its a little its its largely unstable among parents very few cohabiting Stay Together throughout a childs childhood the cohabiting is often in about 25 to 40 of the cases, not the childs second parent. All of this is very different than the situation with cohabitation parents in europe. But even with that its just, you know, way more kids in the us live with one parent than anywhere else. And what we can talk in a moment about kind of what the evidence says about this, but we get get there. Why it matter whether a child grows up with with one or two parents . What are what are some of the reasons why . One situation on average be better or worse . Yeah, let me. Let me stipulate before i get into the reasons why that it is a bunch innately clear in the data that kids from married parent or two parent homes have Better Outcomes and also just the language thing i keep going back and forth between married parent and two parent because as we were just saying in the us, those are really linked, right . So married parents often means have two parents and unmarried parents typically means you dont. And so im using those a bit interchangeably. But so the data is abundantly clear that kids from married parent homes do better. And then the question is well, how much of that is just because married . Parents are more likely to be an advantaged group anyway, that theyre more likely to be highly educated, higher income. And so, you know, obviously, the first thing we want to do is compare across lets just look at the outcomes for kids, whether they have a married or unmarried mother and, you know, lets make sure were looking across moms that are the same education levels, same etc. , same race. And so we see these big differences, kids outcomes, even conditional on that and then researchers have done a lot other more sophisticated things try and really narrow down the parents marital status or the number of parents in the households and so the evidence is pretty overwhelming. We know that kids do better. Okay. So then the question is, and what do i mean by do better theyre less likely to live in poverty, more likely to graduate high school, theyre more likely graduate college, theyre more likely to have higher earnings and be married themselves adulthood. Theyre less likely to get in trouble in school. Theyre less likely to be involved in the criminal justice system, whole host of outcomes. So then the question is why . And a big part of it unsurprising only is income differences, right . And so one of the things that a married or two parent home tends do is have a second parent in the household with capacity. And so just as a matter of simple math, two parents tend to bring in more income. One parent alone and you look at the Median Income of, you know, single mother households, married parent households, its about 2 to 1. Right. So you remember the majority of moms now. So its also not surprising that two parent household tends to have twice as much income and. Income is really protective to kids. It affords a lot of opportunities. We know this right . We know this. We have lots of evidence this. So income is a big part of the story but its not the whole story. A second parent in the household. I mean, i see this in the data, but you and i both know this is parents. Anyone has kids would tell you kids also take a lot of time and we see that kids who live in two parent or married parent households, they have parental time. So the extent we think that parent parental time with kids is an investment its an investment in their Human Capital you know developmental psychologist about the way parents spend their time with kids and in ways foster their development and their needs at different. We just see that kids are married homes are more likely to get those parental time inputs and a third sort of mechanism that think is really important and that theres evidence in favor of is we see kids who live in married parent homes are more likely to get exposure to the type of parenting that Development Psychologist would is is developmentally appropriate and nurturing and beneficial. And you know again i want to i think its really important here to say that i dont see evidence suggesting to me people will say this, but i i sort of dont see the evidence in favor of this line of argument as strong at all. I dont see evidence suggesting that parents across different age groups or marital status necessarily want to parent differently, have strong, strongly different ideas about parenting or, have different views about whether time with their kids or reading to their kids is more or less beneficial. Theres a lot of survey evidence, suggestive evidence that parents, you know, sort of want to do the same things read to their kids, invest, you to spend time with their kids, but if you have two parents in the household, its easier to do it. And so i refer to this in the book and you know, others refer to this in the literature as as bandwidth or less stress in the household. And, you know, if you look at theories of the family theres nuanced differences, emotional bandwidth and toxic stress. But just colloquially speaking, we can stipulate, i think, that single parent households have higher levels of stress, less emotional bandwidth. Right. Again, im thinking here of really compelling evidence, studies and surveys. But as i think most of us would relate to this, you come home from the work day, youre stressed out, you might be stressed out about something in your head, whether you can pay bill, etc. Its hard to be patient with your kid and sit down and read with your kid and people who have a second parent in the house to share of those burdens with or read or are more readily able to do that. And so i think its, you know, to just sort of encapsulate i think theres three key buckets of mechanisms we can think about as to why two parent, mary, parent homes deliver benefits and advan t just home environment to kids. Theres more income, theres more time and theres more emotional bandwidth. Yeah that makes lot of sense. I was thinking as i was reading it, ive, you know, ive sort of had shared custody with a daughter now whos entering the teenage. And another factor there is having two sets of eyes on kids rather one set of eyes, really basic things like that. I think that that kind of intuitively seemed really so so you would say to folks who might argue that that these resources that you focus on arent as important as you say, that its sort of intrinsic traits of more resource parents and kids. You dont see that in the research that youve done this is this really interesting, a lot of social are really reluctant to concede that its married parents or having a second parent in the house thats particularly beneficial and i am and im not sure what i think this isnt doing exactly what they intend to be doing because. I think the intention of lot of social scientists who dont want to concede is to not suggest, you know, people dont want to judge other peoples choices. Right. And so people dont to say, oh, well, its marriage or Something Else. And so then youre left with no, its you know, if reject that and you reject the purpose endurance of descriptive and observation and all studies on this because. Well lets get into whats going on in this sort of science. We dont have a randomized controlled trial, never will where we randomly assign some kids to live with married parents and others. And so once we dont have that randomized controlled trial we cant perfectly nail the causal identification that this marriage or this is having two parents as opposed to Something Else. Now we can see that kids from married parents do better and we can see that once we sort account for all these other things, those gaps go away. Right . So so we can see the mechanisms through which marriage having two parents would confer these benefits. But but still, you know, to the extent that we those things go away, we adjust for them and theres still some remaining gaps. People want to say, oh, its probably not the second parent. Its something about the single parent, such that even if they had another contributing person in the house their kids would still be disadvantaged. And not only do i not see evidence for im just not really willing to basically write off the Single Parents and say that, oh, gosh, even if they had all these other resources, a second person, they just cant intrinsically deliver the type parenting thats conducive to child success the way these unobservable Higher Quality people are who get married. Right. So leaning hard into the unobserved differences. But, you know, it strikes me as an odd thing to be doing and one thats not supported in the data. And i dont and i think in some senses the opposite of what most of us are inclined to do, which is acknowledge the difficulty of the circumstance is of Single Parents, rather than say its something intrinsic about them. The other why, you know, some people are reluctant to say, oh, it its its the fact of being married really helpful. And this i think is a is an important point even if some of those Single Parents married or partnered with the father those of their children you wouldnt the average boost that you would expect from an average marriage because that dad would not be contributing so much to the house. Right. And so this is a really important point because on we know that, you know, basically married parents able to confer a lot of benefits to their kid. But that doesnt tell us about what would happen in any individual case. And so it really depends on any individual case, on what the second parent would bring into the house and so i actually i have a, you know, i have a paper with the living and we wrote in 2017. Its the annual review of economics. And we we write about this marriage premium for kids and we acknowledge this underlying you know the economists term for this is heterogeneity really. Its like variation in what we would expect the marriage premium would be for kids given the different contextual factors, how many resources the mom has by herself, what the second parent would bring, and then what outcome were talking about. And so let me be very if i can. So for example, if were talking about two teenage parents, neither one of them graduated high school, neither one of them has very job prospects, even if they were to be married, they might still struggle to be able to, lets say, their kid through high school. Right. Theres still might be a lot of resource deficits in their household if were talking about a 35 year old mom with an mba. If she were to have a child on her own, she could keep their child out of poverty, you know, could get the child through high school. But because her partner is descriptively like on average, probably highly educated male, because we, you know, theres a lot of assorted of mating the extra income that would be and the extra that we would, you know, put he would bring into that household might be enough to get the kid through college because we actually you know, its not until you get to kids two highly educated married parents that we have a large share of them graduating college and the the the benefit to the kid from having the additional income in the household really depends the moms baseline. What the partner would bring and then what outcome talking about interestingly largest you know going back to something we said earlier the largest decrease in married parents has been in the middle group among parents with a High School Education and this is actu