Slate has a very interesting article about the economics of marriage "markets". The author concludes that imprisonment and the pill have had huge effects on the dropping marriage rate, particularly among blacks.

Ever since John von Neumann's game theory promised to help us understand love and marriage, economists have been interested in how people choose their partners and how relationships work.

It takes two to tango, and it also takes two to get married. Marriage therefore requires you to go out and find someone you want to marry, and persuade them to marry you. It's a matching problem, and it is not unique to marriage. Getting a job is emotionally a different proposition to finding a wife or husband, but in some ways it's similar: you need to consider a range of jobs, work out which ones you prefer, and persuade the employer that he likes the match as much as you do. And just as in the job market, who matches up with whom, and on what terms, will depend on what the competition is offering.

The removal of non-heterosexual men (and in part women) from the necessity of having a POTOS has also made the marriage market more of a speciality for the rarified in taste.

The attempt by members of the GOP to have multiple wives hasn't been enough to counter the effect of NTTIAWWTism.