A movement away from marriage does not appear to have undone economic gains
We recently completed a study, using the Health and Retirement Study, to assess the retirement preparedness of women in the wake of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in any educational activity receiving federal funding.
On the other hand, women have chosen to spend less of their adult life married . They married later, more are never married, and more got divorced. Table 3 shows how the overall improvement in women’s wealth relates to their marital status. The large decline in median wealth for women who spend their lives mostly married largely reflects declining fortunes for their husbands. Since the wealth of the mostly-single and never-married women has remained relatively stable, their holdings have increased sharply relative to the mostly married.