I find it interesting/surprising that the word "divorce" never appears in this article. My understanding was that the divorce rate also was lower for college-educated people. I'm also surprised by lack of mentions of family planning -- are single parents without college educations actively choosing to be parents or tripping into it?<p>But overall, this seems circuitous. The author acknowledges that inequality is both a cause and effect interacting with marriage, and cites several ways that kids are better off in two-parent families -- but the description of those comparisons makes no mention of controlling for these other factors. So one can have a lot of skepticism that a poor two-parent household, where both parents need to work long hours or multiple jobs to cover rent, where housing is less stable, where surprising costs (a broken-down car etc) turn into catastrophic disruptions, will turn out healthy successful kids. But the finding that kids do better in two parent families already selects out a number of metrics -- educational attainment, future earnings, lower rate of getting in trouble at school or with law enforcement - all of which are desirable irrespective of family structure. Those seem like better goals, which we are already pursuing just relatively ineffectively.<p>You want more kids to go to college? Make college cheaper, make colleges spend more money on instruction and less on administration and coaches.<p>Want kids to have fewer behavioral issues at school? Well, stuff that could make their home life more stable whether their parents are married or not may include safe, affordable, stable housing, and IDK, schools that don't have to do active shooter drills b/c of the real threat of being invaded by a well-armed crazy person might be nice.<p>Want kids to grow up to earn more? I think Piketty's focus on the share of growth that goes to capital versus labor is important. Generational wage stagnation in real terms is still critical.<p>Want kids to get in trouble with the law less? In my city, the police did a mass arrest of hundreds of kids skateboarding recently. No one's top concern about crime here is "too many kids are skateboarding". Maybe law enforcement should focus more on e.g. corrupt local officials, employers with systemic wage theft, landlords dangerously skipping repairs and maintenance, etc etc rather than kids on skateboards?