Richard Reeves

Richard Reeves's new book is Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do about It. From his MarketWatch interview with John Coumarianos:

MarketWatch: As an immigrant to the United States, how long did it take you to realize how stratified the classes were here?

Reeves: It was a combination of looking at transitional matrices [tables showing mobility] during the day — the U.S. is pretty sticky at the top — and listening to people talk and operate on the weekends and evening. In the U.K. we do class in plain sight. Here’s it’s more quiet. There’s a kind of collective national self-denial about it.

Q: You write: ‘Far from abandoning marriage, college-educated Americans are busily rehabilitating the institution for the modern age, turning it into a child-rearing machine for a knowledge economy.’ All of that sounds like a pretty unerotic business.

A: America is where the most powerful women in the history of the world are more likely to get and stay married. It might have been hard to imagine that the most educated and economically powerful women would get married at high rates. But there is an acknowledgment that this is the best way, especially for the kids. If it’s not “‘til death do us part,” it’s at least “til the last high-schooler departs.” So there is some empty-nest divorce, but not much. People are getting married later so they have their more romantic experiences...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue