Unequal Family Lives

Naomi Cahn is the Harold H. Greene Chair at George Washington University School of Law. She has written or co-written ten books on topics ranging from family structure to reproductive technology to elder care. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, ranging from The New Yorker to the Washington Post. She is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of both the American Bar Foundation and the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. June Carbone is the Robina Chair in Law, Science, and Technology at the University of Minnesota School of Law. She is the co-author of Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family, with Naomi Cahn (2014). Laurie F. DeRose teaches at Georgetown University. She is a Research Assistant Professor for the Maryland Population Research Center, Director of Research for the World Family Map project, and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. Her early research on sub-Saharan African demography laid the foundation for her current focus on global family studies. W. Bradford Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. He studies the impact of family structure on the welfare of children, men and women, and communities. His latest book (with Nicholas H. Wolfinger) is Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage Among African Americans and Latinos (2016).

Introduction Laurie F. DeRose, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone and W. Bradford Wilcox; Part I. The Increasingly Unequal Socioeconomic Character of Family Life: 1. Families unequal: socioeconomic gradients in family patterns across the US and Europe Marcia J. Carlson; 2. Family forms and social inequality in Latin America Albert Esteve and Elizabeth Flores Paredes; Part II. The Causes of Increasingly Diverging Family Structures: 3. How inequality drives family formation: the prima facie case Andrew J. Cherlin; 4. Universal or unique? Understanding diversity in partnership experiences across Europe Brienna Perelli-Harris; 5. Family structure and the decline of work for men in postwar America Nicholas Eberstadt; Part III. Consequences of Growing Divergence: 6. Single-mother families, mother's educational level, children's school outcomes: a study of 21 countries Anna Garriga and Paolo Berta; 7. Family structure and socioeconomic inequality of opportunity in Europe and the United States Diederik Boertien, Fabrizio Bernardi and Juho Härkönen; 8. Families and the wealth of nations: what does family structure have to do with growth around the globe? W. Bradford Wilcox and Joseph Price; Part IV. Bridging the Growing Family Divide: 9. Family policy, socioeconomic inequality and the gender revolution Fran Goldscheider and Sharon Sassler; 10. Where's the glue? Policies to close the family gap Richard V. Reeves; Part V. Commentary and Concluding Reflections: 11. The pathology of patriarchy and family inequalities Lynn Prince Cooke; 12. Concluding reflections: what does less marriage have to do with more family inequality? W. Bradford Wilcox; 13. Commentary/afterword/concluding thoughts on family change and economic inequality June Carbone and Naomi Cahn.