Marital Privilege: Marriage, Inequality, and the Transformation of American Law

How the privileged legal status of marriage survived decades of constitutional struggle and social change

The United States is unusual among wealthy western nations in the degree to which the law channels public benefits and private economic resources through marriage. This remains so despite seismic changes in American family life in the last several decades of the twentieth century. During this period, marriage rates declined while divorce and nonmarital childbearing soared. Social movem...