Declining Marriage Rates and The Collapse of Household Savings 1980–2014

The aggregate household saving rate has declined in many nations since the 1980s, partly due to increased borrowing. To explain this puzzling trend, previous scholarship has focused on precarity, welfare state retrenchment, and financial development. Building on research describing marriage’s significance in shaping the capacity and the motivation to accumulate assets, my main contribution in this paper is to theorize that the retreat from this institution was another factor behind the dwindling of aggregate household savings. I also empirically explore this hypothesis using country-year macro data from 19 OECD countries between 1980 and 2014. After controlling for several of the major factors previous research shows contribute to the decline of savings, including interest rates and asset price growth, I find additional effects of declining marriage rates. I estimate that this factor explains between 14 and 32% of the fall in household savings. My argument and results do not suggest promoting marriage to bolster savings. Instead, they invite research on the precautionary strategies of unmarried people, how they may disrupt the role of private savings in contemporary economies, and how policies can adapt to support savings among diverse families. Importantly, this paper also calls for attention to the macroeconomic implications of family change, which remain understudied owing to the enduring traction of the “hostile worlds” view of the economy and intimacy.