Archive for July, 2010
Matrimania makes some deaths count more, some survivors count less
In 2006, New York City was rocked by the terrible death of Sean Bell. Unfortunately, the shooting of Sean Bell was not a rare or unique event. Some quick exploration finds that NYC police fatally shot an average of 24 people per year from 1990 through 2000, that, “in 77% of the incidents where officers fired their weapons at civilians between 1999 and 2006, the officers were the only ones shooting, with officers often shooting at unarmed civilians,” and that “during 1996 and 1997, 90.5% of civilian shooting targets were black and Latino.” Horribly, the death of unarmed black and Latino men in a hail of police bullets in NYC happens much too often, yet rarely becomes a huge news story.
One thing that made Sean Bell’s death huge news was the fact that it occurred on the eve of his wedding. The planned wedding separated Mr. Bell from potential stereotypes, giving the media a guaranteed attention-getter. Mr. Bell’s death is far from the only one to be treated differently because of proximity to a wedding. Just this morning I heard a radio report about a terrible plane crash in Pakistan: all 152 people aboard were killed; the only ones described in any detail were two Americans and a Pakistani couple who had just celebrated their wedding.
This is not to question that each of these deaths is tragic, but to point out that the media often relies on matrimania to make some violent, untimely deaths seem more terrible than others.
The loss of Sean Bell is in our minds again today, because NYC is paying his family $7 million to settle their lawsuit for “wrongful death, negligence, assault and civil rights violations.” Technically speaking, none of the settlement will go to Nicole Bell, whom Mr. Bell was about to marry after a long-term unmarried partnership during which they bore and co-raised two children. “The money will go to her two children with Mr. Bell, Jada, 7, and Jordyn, 4; she will not receive a share because she was not married to Mr. Bell (she took his name legally after his death).”
Since Ms. Bell was involved in negotiating the settlement, I’m willing to assume that she’s OK with the way it works. But what if they hadn’t had children? What if they had been planning to adopt? What if they were all much older and the children were independent adults? What happens to unmarried survivors whose partners die wrongful deaths?
Professor Nancy Polikoff has documented that few states allow any compensation to unmarried survivors, and New York State has consistently denied them – see her book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, page 88-89. Matrimania is not just an annoying media habit. Reliance on marital status in wrongful death cases, as in so many other legal and economic policies, can double the pain of a loss and create permanent hardships for people whose caring, interdependent relationships don’t count.
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economics & poverty, matrimania, race & ethnicity
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Jul 28th, 2010 by Nicky
Introducing a blogroll
Well it’s about time! The Unmarried Blog has finally started a blogroll (at right). The handful of blogs listed today are those that I have personally followed for quite a while. Please suggest others via comments.
You’ll also notice a list of editors. We’ll soon be introducing several new editors who have joined our team in order to bring you more and better posts about alternatives to marriage. And, we’ll soon post guidelines for writing guest posts.
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beyond same-sex marriage, singlism
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Jul 27th, 2010 by Nicky
How big are we?
Today the Census Bureau sent a bunch of statistics to the media to help reporters write attention-getting articles about National Unmarried and Single Americans Week – the third full week of September (Sept. 19-25 in 2010).
To borrow a line from our friend Tom Coleman: much of the data in this press release is based on the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of only 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because this sample is so small, it is subject to much greater error than the American Community Survey. Until all the data has been gathered and processed from the 2010 Census, we’ll keep using the 2006 – 2008 American Community Survey three-year estimates as our best source of information. The ACS uses a much bigger sample size, and combining three years of data makes it even bigger and more reliable.
For example, the 2008 3-year ACS estimates that less than half – 49.566% – of all households in the U.S. are occupied by married couples (with or without children or other people).
I haven’t yet found an ACS data-point for marital status of householder, though it is possible to work backwards into it. The CPS does report the marital status of householders, finding 3,348,000 married individuals who maintain households without their spouses. Some might be separated, or long-distance commuters, or married to someone who is in the military or incarcerated or just plain missing.
We think about these numbers a lot, because it means a lot to people to be “in the majority.” Somehow, there’s validation in numbers: people instinctively conflate “majority” and “average” with “normal” and “okay.” Of course, AtMP is here to say that unmarried people are perfectly normal and okay no matter how the stats tick up or down over the years. And of course, we celebrate the solidly consistent trends showing the unmarried community’s growth and diversity.
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statistics
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Jul 19th, 2010 by Nicky
Behind the numbers of single black women
If you like charts and percentages, you’ll love this collection of figures comparing marriage rates by race & gender with a focus on people with high incomes / educations.
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race & ethnicity, statistics
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Jul 13th, 2010 by Nicky
DP benefits are issues of health & justice, not orientation (updated)
Thanks to Jonathan for sending me the great news that Google will cover the extra tax costs for employees with same-sex partners whose domestic partner benefits coverage is treated as taxable income (unlike spousal benefits). It is infuriating that Google would level the playing field only for same-sex partners, leaving different-sex partners to pay more or “just get married.” This is one of my biggest pet peeves, and here is (a corrected version of) what I posted as a comment on the New York Times blog about the story.
As reported by HRC, Google extends benefits to the domestic partners of both same- and different-sex employees (as do 95% of companies that offer DP benefits).
According the US Census Bureau, there are three times as many different-sex unmarried partner households in the San Francisco – Oakland – Fremont Metro Area workforce than same-sex ones. Nationwide, different-sex partners comprise 88.6% of the 6.15 million households headed by cohabiting couples. In a 2006 study, Badgett of the Williams Institute (who is quoted in the main article) wrote that “people with different-sex partners who have domestic partner coverage [currently] outnumber the same-sex partners with domestic partner coverage by a nine to one margin” and that, if all US employers offered DP benefits, “out of every thousand employees, on average only one to four would sign up a same-sex partner, and another 13–21 would sign up a different-sex partner.”
This is not a “gay” issue, it is a public health and social justice issue. Again quoting Badgett, “Gay men and lesbians in couples are more likely to be uninsured than are married heterosexuals, and people with unmarried different-sex partners are the least likely to be insured.” In addition, different-sex partners are also more likely to be people of color, and to have lower incomes, than married or same-sex couples. (More on unmarried people’s access to health care.)
What a company as rich as Google should do is convert its entire family benefits structure to a plus-one model, in which every employee has an equal right to extend benefits to her/his economic dependents, children up to age 26 (per new federal law) plus one non-dependent adult regardless of relationship type.
Google’s new subsidy policy is a ridiculously wrong-headed move that will surely antagonize it’s workforce and should hurt its global reputation.
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economics & poverty, health care, race & ethnicity
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Jul 2nd, 2010 by Nicky
Healthcare.gov ignores unmarried partners
As an early step in implementing health care reform, the federal government has launched a new website intended to help you “Take health care into your own hands.” Unless you’re in an unmarried partnership, that is.
A search for “domestic partner” on the website returns ZERO information (a search for “spouse” returns 43 links). You can be a “family with children” or an “individual,” but you’ll have a hard time finding information for child-free couples and nothing for unmarried couples.
Rather than get mad, let’s take the feds at their word and help them improve. Many pages have a feedback box in the lower right corner that asks “Was this page helpful?” Click NO, and add a short note such as “I want information about domestic partner coverage.”
We’ll keep an eye on healthcare.gov to see whether they really improve.
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health care
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Jul 1st, 2010 by Nicky
