In A Nutshell

 

U.S. Marriage Trends

In the African-American community in the U.S., these kinds of factors have led to fewer marriages, lots of female headed households, and lots of half-siblings. Working class whites and Hispanics in the U.S. have started to follow the same patterns.

Over the past half-century, U.S. four-year colleges have shifted from enrolling mostly men to enrolling mostly women, while the economic position of non-college men has weakened markedly. We examine how these changes correspond with the evolving structure of marriage markets across cohorts and places. 

As college men have become increasingly scarce, college women have maintained stable marriage rates by marrying high-earning non-college men. This shift—combined with the broader economic decline of non-college men—has sharply reduced the pool of economically stable partners available to non-college women: the share of non-college men who earn above the national median and are not married to college women has fallen by more than 50%. Cross-area evidence shows that education gaps in marriage are smaller where non-college men face lower rates of joblessness and incarceration. Taken together, the evidence suggests that deteriorating outcomes for men have primarily undermined the marriage prospects of non-college women.

from a new NBER working paper by Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman & Joseph Winkelmann.

When Will Cherry Creek Flood?

Until the Cherry Creek and Chatfield Reservoirs were built, Cherry Creek and the South Platte Rivers, respectively seriously flooded about once every thirty years and often at the same time.

From my days as a journalist, I learned that the Cherry Creek dam was not built to the engineer ordered specifications. It has nonetheless held for decades, so it isn't too bad, but it would probably fail under conditions less extreme than those it was designed to withstand.

We get more extreme weather events now than anyone expected when it was built. We will probably have what until recently was considered at 500 year weather event at least every 50 years now.

The Cherry Creek basin is mostly designed to address this risk, with green spaces and parking garages along most of its extent.

But, there is one place along its edges, where the basin has steep constraining walls, and critical infrastructure is just a few feet above the narrow walled Cherry Creek bike path. That is the Denver Health Emergency Room, Denver proper's only Level One Trauma Center.

I worry about this risk now and then, and we really should build a flood wall to protect it now, before the Cherry Creek dam fails is a "freak not freak" weather event.