In a comment that ignored the main point of my recent article, Dr. Stanley Kurtz criticized people for ignoring some of his points. My main point was that the drop in the marriage rate in the Netherlands seems to be well explained by the fact that the Netherlands is in Europe. The marriage rate in the Netherlands tracked that in Europe throughout the nineties. It seems very odd to attribute this average variation in the marriage rate to the recent legalization of SSM in the Netherlands.
Overlooking this point, Dr. Kurtz chose to comment on a minor point I made. He objected to this observation:
If I understand Dr. Kurtz’s brief comments correctly, he considers it entirely implausible that a decline in the number of young people entering the marriage pool might have affected the Dutch marriage rate in the 90’s. He suggests the decline is due solely to the increase in cohabitation which is, evidently, caused by legalized SSM. As Dr. Kurtz does not elaborate further, I do not know whether he is denying the fact that there are fewer available couples, or whether he is denying the marriage rate would drop if there were fewer couples.
I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is aware that, all other social factors being equal, fewer available marriageable couples would mean fewer marriages. Consequently, I will address this question: Are there fewer couples of marriageable age in the Netherlands?
The answer is “yes”.
As most people have noticed, people tend to marry when they are young adults; so young adults might be thought to make up the “marriage pool” in any country. Examining Statitstics Netherland we see that in 1990, the young adult age group, consisting of those between 20-45 years old, made up 41% of the Dutch population. This fraction dropped to 36% by 2003. This 11% decrease in the marriage pool represents roughly two thirds of the 17% decrease in the Dutch marriage rate observed between 1991 and 2002. Consequently, based on this data, one might correctly observe the shift in demographics explains the drop in part. Possibly, it explains more than half the drop in the marriage rate.
It is also useful to note that examining the pool of 20-45 year olds, as I just did, may
underestimate the drop in available couples. On average, Dutch women tend to marry near the age of 27, or nearer the younger end of the 20-45 year old age range. I thought it might be useful to examine the age group between 25-30. Unfortunately, these were availabl at Statistics Netherlands. So, instead, I examined the birth rate statistics to get a rough estimate of the supply of “typical brides” during the 1990s and first few years in the 2000’s, the period Mr. Livestro and Dr. Kurtz are discussing.
I decided to make a rough estimate , reasoning as follows: One might expect the the supply of brides in 1990 to be strongly influenced by the birth rate in 27 years earlier, that is 1963; the supply of brides in 2002 would be affected by the birth rate in 1975. Between these years, Dutch birth rate dropped from 20.9/1000 persons to 13/1000 persons. This represents a 35% drop in potential 27 year old brides during the 90s. This number is twice the 17% drop observed in the marriage rate.1
Taking the two estimates together, it seems plausible that the drop in the available brides might have a very significant effect on the drop in the marriage rate during the 90s!
Of course, other factors affect the decrease in the marriage rate. These include: the tendency to delay marriage, the tendency to remain single altogether, and the tendency to cohabit rather than marry. I failed to mention these in my previous article, and Dr. Kurtz seems perturbed by my omission. However, it is generally considered a relatively minor sin to name the major cause while omitting minor contributing causes. In contrast, Dr. Kurtz’s insistence on waving away the impact of demographics, which appears to have the major effect on the marriage rate, in favor of his pet theory that the decrease in the marriage rate is due to legalized same sex marriage suggests an obstinate refusal to look at existing data.
Yes, this blogger still believes that to suggest the Dutch decrease in the marriage rate is due to the Dutch legalization of SSM “boggles the mind”.
===== End notes:
[1] Clearly, more complicated analyses are necessary to determine a precise number of eligible couples. My intention is to only to show the drop in available couples is likely substantial. Birth data are available at OECD Fertility Data Baby Boom..
Kurtz argument seems like what my grandmother called a ‘blinder’ argument, i.e. he had a point to make but the blinders on his face made him not see the facts that refuted the point.
Both your arguments are extremely valid and it perplexes me that Mr. Kurtz doesn’t see them.
First, the decline is no more than that of the entirety of the EU and the age demographics, as you have shown, are probably the overwhelming bulk of the change, if not ALL of the change.
I would suggest that the marriage rate of 18-40 year olds in 1990 and 2004 would be the better indication of if the real rate of marriage has declined (or increased) over this period.
I agree there would be better specific data to look at.
Unfortunately, I can only get the overall marriage rate easily (meaning… in less than one day, on the web, googling in my non-expert fashion.) . This would be a lame excuse if I were writing a thesis– but I think the data I found are sufficient to show Kurtz is just not looking at the effect of aging population at all. What the data I found show is that the effect falls somewhere between “very important’ to “overwhelmingly important”.
I actually think your data is more than sufficient to prove your point.
I was suggesting that more to Kurtz et al. who are the ones trying to make the point that the marriage rate has decreased. Given your excellent point that it hasn’t fallen any more than the EU rate and that an aging population is INDEED a very important factor in that fall (Europewide in fact), if he wants to make a real argument I would suggest he look at rates of marriage for the marriagible (sp?). HE is the one who needs to do the research, since it his he that is trying to make the point, you’ve made an extremely good refutation based on common sense and what should be easily grasped data.
Shoot— typed a comment in the wrong pane! (I tried to make that stray one go away….)
Anyway, I see what you are saying Trey. Yes. In fact, I suspect a fair number of people heard “aging population” and thought.. Yeah, I’ve heard their population is aging. I know I’ve read about it in discussion of European social welfare programs-, which I read in the Wall Street Journal. (I sort of assume the people writing at the NRO read that?)