Charles Murray discusses the state of white America — avoiding contentious issues of race by discussing non-Hispanic whites of ages 30-49, contrasting the upper 20% (the upper middle class) from the bottom 30% (the working class):
Steve Sailer picks out some salient factoids about the new class distinctions:
- For example, the being-married rate among upper middle class whites has fallen only trivially from 88% in 1960 to 83% in 2010. Among the bottom 30%, however, the being-married rate has dropped from 83% to 48%.
- Among the bottom 30% of whites, the illegitimacy rate was 6% in 1960 and approaching 50% in 2010.
- A substantial majority of the upper middle class retains effective religious involvement, while a substantial majority of the white working class does not. It’s another case of data not matching popular impressions. Among those with a religion, fundamentalism is increasing. But, actual religious involvement in the working class is plummeting.
John Derbyshire has his own favorite bits:
- The older you are in this room, the more likely it is statistically that your parents did not have college educations, and that you grew up in a working-class or lower-middle-class home yourself The younger you are in this room, the more likely it is that your parents were in the upper-middle class, were college-educated, and that you have spent your entire life living in an upper-middle class environment.
- One of the curious things about the new upper class is precisely that they are behaving in all the right ways. They’re getting married, they’re working hard … They’re doing all the right stuff [but] they won’t dare say: “This is the way people ought to be.” They will not preach what they practice. I put this down to non-judgmentalism …
But they are not having children.
That much has changed a lot since 1960.
This is significant as a cause, and even more so as a symptom.