Anecdote is not the singular of data, but I have a hypothesis. I have a circle of friends that involve people making six figures. They will NEVER get married. One guy will not even let women in his condo. Having watched a few people we know get divorce raped, and dealing with three of them sucking on a firearm in the aftermath, I'm wondering how many men my age and younger are looking at the risks of marriage and saying "No Fucking Way." Prenups in the USA are worthless and not worth the legal fees of setting them up and family courts hate fathers. Nobody gets married thinking that they are getting divorced, and not all marriages fail etc but that fear is there. I'd be curious to see if anyone has done any studies on the impact of the courts and divorce law on marriage rates.As I understand it, once the researchers came to this point, they basically said, "welp, we have no idea what changed but culture is different" and they're not wrong.
I will 100% assert that there's a bright dividing line at "college grad" on that one, too. The divorces I've watched among couples where both have been to college have been largely no-fault, no-contest, civil affairs. The divorces I've watched among couples where even one member has not finished a college diploma are trench warfare. I will even assert that as the assets go up amongst the uncolleged, the combat ratchets up. The college-educated side generally lawyers up more successfully but the lawyers on both sides get rich.
College degrees, even with all the art students are starbucks, still offer lots of open doors for jobs. People without degrees are being left behind. When the option is fight like a cornered animal or starve, the human survival animal kicks in. If you are like me, those couples got married later in life, say mid 20's. About the mid 20's is when the emotional cortex starts to take a second place to the thinking brain. The most horrible marriage I know of is a couple that got married at 16 and the whole relationship was based on the emotional lashing out of two people that never got the chance to develop the logic components of dealing with emotions. The couple is on the far outskirts of the friend group and every story I hear about them points to a home life of pure emotional torture and hell.The divorces I've watched among couples where both have been to college have been largely no-fault, no-contest, civil affairs.