- The Iona Institute - https://ionainstitute.ie -

Mind the Gap: how marriage and family differ by social class

‘Mind the Gap’, a new report from The Iona Institute, shows how a person’s chances of marrying are hugely affected by the social class they are born into.

The report shows that upper professional workers are more than twice as likely as unskilled workers to be married. The huge discrepancy shows that there are formidable social impediments to marrying if you from a socially disadvantaged group.  These impediments need to be fully explored and, where possible, removed.

The figures, derived from the National Quarterly Household Survey for the fourth quarter of 2015 and provided by the CSO, show that 65.7% of upper professional workers (‘Social Class A’) aged 18-49 are likely to be married, compared with just 31.8% of unskilled or elementary workers (‘Social Class I’).

The report can be found in full here [1].