Marriage, Canadian style

Canadians are less inclined towards marriage than Americans. How much less?

The picture on the left shows the percentage of Americans currently married by age, taken from pewsocialtrends.org. The picture on the right shows the same information for Canada, taken from the 1961 and 2011 censuses. The 1961 Canadian census does not break out 18-24 year olds - only 20-24 years olds (45 percent married) and 15-19 year olds (5 percent married). 

In 1960/61 Canadian and US marriage patterns were strikingly similar. By 2010/11, however, the percentage of Canadians who were married (as opposed to in common law unions) was significantly lower than the comparable percentage for Americans, especially among 25-34 year olds, even though the Canadian numbers also include legally married same sex couples.

US data often point to racial differences in the extent of marriage: "Whites" are more likely to be married than Hispanic or Black Americans, as shown in the picture below/left.  

It's difficult to create Canadian racial categories that are directly comparable to US ones. A Mexican who self-identified as white would be considered white in the Canadian statistics, for example, but Hispanic in the US ones. On the other hand, an Iranian could be considered a "visible minority" in Canada but would be white in the US. 

The picture below/on the right shows the percentage of the population legally married, by age, for "visible minorities" (a term that includes Blacks, East and South Asians, as well as West Asians and Hispanics who do not identify as white), Aboriginal Canadians, and "Whites" - the latter term being used here to refer to anyone who is neither a self-identified member of a visible minority, nor an Aboriginal Canadian.

I was actually stunned by the differences in marriage rates across the groups. Admittedly, if Quebec, where common law marriage is more prevalent, was excluded from the analysis, the differences would be smaller, but the numbers are still large. 

Part of the difference between marriage rates in Canada and the US may come down to incentives. In Canada there are limited tax advantages to being legally married, and common-law couples and legally married couples are treated more-or-less identically in the tax-benefit system. In fact, legal marriage might be thought to have disadvantages, especially in Quebec, to the extent that it complicates separation and the termination of relationships.

In the US, on the other hand, marriage is advantageous, from a taxation point of view, for couples where one spouse has middle-to-high earnings and the other spouse has lower earnings. (The tax advantages to marriage are smaller or non-existent at low income levels, or when spouses have equal earnings.) Differences in the US and Canadian tax regimes might explain the higher rate of marriage among US whites as opposed to Canadian ones. Also, to the extent that income and earnings are correlated with race, tax/benefit factors might contribute to differences in marriage rates across racial groups in the US.

Values, cultures, and social norms, however, also matter.  Because I was interested, I did a quick calculation of the percentage of people over 18 who are currently legally married, by visible minority group.

The various visible minority groups have quite different demographic structures. For example, the "not visible minority" group is, on average, much older than most visible minority groups, with the exception of some long-standing visible minority groups such as Japanese-Canadians. Comparisons of marriage rates between groups with different age structures are problematic, because marriage patterns have been changing over time, and because the proportion of the population who are married rises and then falls as a population ages. So these numbers give only a very rough indication of the differences in propensity to marry across different ethnic groups.

My number one take-away from all of these graphs? 

If being legally married is a rough-and-ready indicator of a person's susceptibility to conservative values, then anyone trying to reach a conservative-values target-audience should be aiming very slightly more towards men than women, at middle-aged Canadians, and, among younger Canadians, at Chinese, South Asian, West Asian, Arab, Korean and (male) Filipino voters.

Comments

[Determinant]

If being legally married is a rough-and-ready indicator of a person's susceptibility to conservative values, then anyone trying to reach a conservative-values target-audience should be aiming very slightly more towards men than women, at middle-aged Canadians, and, among younger Canadians, at Chinese, South Asian, West Asian, Arab, Korean and (male) Filipino voters.

Maybe, but the NDP also targets those groups too. ;)

The NDP does have daycare services available at Conventions, people bring their infants onto the Convention Floor and we have cute little "Little Dipper" T-shirts for sale.

One should never import American religious comparisons to Canada; one thing the two countries differ greatly on is religion and the pattern of religious/political/cultural history. The Canadian church scene is far more British than it is American and in fact the closest comparator is Australia.

The other thing is that the NDP is the second choice party among Canadian evangelicals (my church gets an evangelical magazine whose title escapes me). Evangelicals are as likely to be economically left-leaning as they are to be right-leaning. The Christian Left has a long and vibrant history in Canada and Canadian evangelicalism has never separated itself from that tradition. Why should it, it founded that tradition!

[Shangwen]

Are people in traditional household arrangement "susceptible to" conservative values in an ideological sense, or is it because their daily lives hinge more on a relatively narrow set of concerns focused on traditional institutions--family, child-rearing, etc? I'm not saying those are inherently conservative activities, but a higher reliance on a small set of institutions may make you less likely to care about sweeping reform or the concerns of relatively remote minority groups. (Consider the very low public support for Idle No More, e.g.) When I look at people who've been single their whole lives, I like to think they get their first (partial) taste of married life when their aging parents start needing a lot of help.

I'm always skeptical of claims that "Canadians are fundamentally left-/right-wing" because most people's pre-electoral concerns are usually a grab-bag of ideologically mixed items and tired tropes--healthcare, roads, taxes, etc. To the extent that domestic (married parental) life narrows the scope of your relevant institutions, you could call it conservative if you by that you meant incrementalist improvement of mainstream institutions.

[FR Woolley]

Shangwen - Lena Edlund has an interesting article http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/117/3/917.short - it's probably ungated on her web page. Anyways her argument there is that the decline in marriage has made women more left-wing, that is, more interested in having a state that providse social security. The family and the government are both institutions that provide social insurance. If one has more social insurance through one's family networks, one needs less social insurance through public institutions.

Take a look at Lena's argument (she's actually a fascinating and very creative person) and see what you think.

[Shangwen]

Thanks Frances, I couldn't access the article but am familiar with that line of reasoning. It certainly matches the ideological breakdown I see in my own life (which obviously is the great test of empirical generalization...). Not surprisingly, I often hear married and more conservative women rationalize their preferences, as do single and more left-wing women: either familial security is better because intimate, private, etc, or state benefits are superior because more rational, just, etc. Take what you can get, I suppose.

I've also seen arguments that urbanization increases a preference for left-wing policies, which is intriguing given that many immigrant groups (or at least the ones that don't arrive poor and establish dysfunctional communities in Canada) tend to prefer both conservative values (including marriage) and urban life.

This is one of those areas where people who are really attached to politics and ideology tend to be clueless about the 90% of people who don't care about politics. When people on the left hear that the CPC is wooing immigrants because they align with conservative values, they conjure up their stereotypes--uneducated, religious, mean, xenophobic--and dismiss the other side's probability of success. But since most people don't give a rat's a$$ about politics, there isn't a lot of wooing needed for people who don't have a strong party affiliation. (On the other hand, the GOP apparently had an epic fail assuming that catholic Hispanics would swing their way because of abortion.)

In the context of your post, I wonder if "intimate institutionalism" is more apt than "conservative".

[nottrampis]

perhaps they have become DIVORCED from reality!

[FR Woolley]

Shangwen - here's an ungated version: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rpande/papers/qje_all.pdf

nottrampis - Groan.

[Linda]

Frances and Shangwen: I need to go back and read (rather than skim) Edlund's article, but Shangwen's comments started me wondering....just because one is caught up in the day-to-day routines of parenting doesn't necessarily lessen the dependence on social institutions (not quite what you were saying, I know). In a society where jobs frequently dictate location (is that changing much?), the familial networks get frayed. I am very conscious of the fact that my ageing mother is on the other side of the country, so I can't help her much. Moreover, since I have only one child, I am equally conscious that when I age I cannot look to her for all of my support, so I need to do my bit to keep the welfare systems in place. Looking around I see lots of people with little familial support, even if they are in traditional relationships. Clearly I need to think more about this before it becomes completely coherent, but my break from marking is over.

[Fran R Woolley]

Linda - humm.... I wonder if smaller family sizes might have a similar effect to lone parenthood? It would be hard to test empirically because strong welfare states tend to promote fertility e.g. Scandinavia. Distance from family? Again, empirically hard to test, because more professional people tend to be more mobile....

[Jacques René Giguère]

linda; why is why that very often , those who favor /business" are against social programs that facilitate mobility.
On the other hand, it was said in the '50's that IBM meant "I've been moved.". It was suspected that large corporations would do like the army: prevent any social ties outside the company so you would rely on them.
In the early '80's I saw a documentaery on CBS where a sociologist argued that the hippie commune of the 60's-'70's, usually populated by offspring of the upper-middle class, were trying to find the extended family that their parents were unable to provide due to their frequent reassignments.

[Neil]

"If being legally married is a rough-and-ready indicator of a person's susceptibility to conservative values"

Huh? Where did that leap come from. I feel like being married is probably a decent indicator of someone's willingness to take a chance on a lifelong commitment. Conservative values? Not even close.

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