WHAT HAPPENED IN SCANDINAVIA?: Stanley Kurtz replies to M.V. Lee Badgett

M.V. Lee Badgett, professor of economics and gay and lesbian studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has a Slate piece that purports to refute my work on same-sex unions and marriage in Scandinavia. It doesn't. Badgett's case is built on statistical sleight of hand. And his claim that "heterosexual marriage looks pretty healthy in Scandinavia" flies in the face of a broad scholarly consensus.

The idea that Scandinavian marriage is dying is not my invention. Have a look at this 2000 piece from the Los Angeles Times. Scandinavians, the Times reports, "have all but given up on marriage as a framework for family living, preferring cohabitation even after their children are born." According to the Times, "the 1990's witnessed a resolute rejection of marriage, even among couples having children." Whether they praise or blame the Scandinavian family system, scholars agree.

Badgett's odd claim that Scandinavian marriage is doing just fine is built on a statistical trick. According to Badgett, roughly four out of five couples with children in Denmark and Norway are married. That's true, but it's also incomplete and deeply misleading. What Badgett doesn't tell you is that her "couples with children" figure includes only couples who are living together. Children who live with single parents or step families are omitted from Badgett's report. ...

And the problem is getting worse. In Norway, cohabiting families are the fastest-growing family type, while married couples with children are the fastest shrinking family type. The proportion of Norwegian children living with married parents dropped 16 percent from 1989 to 2002 (from 78 percent to 62 percent). ...

You can read more in this summary from Statistics Norway. Notice what Norway's own national statisticians take to be the big story in the numbers--the rise of cohabitation and the decline of married couples with children. That's a far cry from Badgett's claim that "heterosexual marriage looks pretty healthy in Scandinavia." ...

...Until recently, Holland was vastly more traditional about marriage than Scandinavia. The Dutch had very low rates of parental cohabitation, and very low rates of out-of-wedlock birth. But since registered partnerships and formal gay marriage were introduced in the Netherlands, parental cohabitation has spread widely, and the out-of-wedlock birthrate has been moving up at a fast pace.

This is exactly what Badgett says needs to happen in order to prove that registered partnerships and gay marriage really do encourage parental cohabitation. The Netherlands does in fact meet the causal test Badgett sets. Gay marriage came in, and the out-of-wedlock birthrate shot up. ...

I've explained how I think the larger causal process works, but Badgett has ignored what I've said. I do not argue that gay marriage is the sole cause, or even the main cause, of parental cohabitation. It is one of several causes. Gay marriage is one part of a new stage of marital decline that contains three basic elements: parental cohabitation, legal equalization of marriage and cohabitation, and gay marriage. My claim is that these three factors are mutually reinforcing. When any of these three factors emerges, the others tend to follow. And they draw out the initial factors still further.

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posted by Eve at 5:10 PM | link

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