Revealed: the marriage gap between Britain’s rich and poor

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson and Julie Bindel debate the inequality of marriage” startat=1048]

Listen

[/audioplayer]In the digital era, those looking for soulmates can be brutally clear about who need not apply. There are websites like Blues Match, for alumni of Oxbridge and Ivy League universities only. Then come the smartphone apps: Tinder, for straightforward dating, and ‘BeautifulPeople’, where members are kicked out if deemed too ugly. The latest arrival is Luxy, an app for those who don’t want to date anyone who needs to split a bill. Or, to use its own description, ‘Tinder without the poor people.’

Luxy has been deplored for its overt snobbery but it is, in effect, a digital version of what used to be called the London Season. The idea of the rich marrying other rich people is making a comeback — and alongside it there is another trend, as modern as the internet itself. Those at the top are deadly serious about marriage, prepared to invest time and money in it. But among those at the bottom (often, those under a welfare regime which makes couples poorer), marriage rates are steadily falling. A marriage gap is now opening, bringing with it deep implications for social cohesion.

I have just finished filming a documentary for Channel 4 Dispatches entitled How The Rich Get Richer, looking at inequality in all of its dimensions. We commissioned the Centre for Social Justice (on whose advisory board I sit) to trawl crime, school, wealth and deprivation figures for every neighborhood in the country. Many of the problems have changed depressingly little over the years, in spite of the billions spent in Labour’s battle against poverty. But one inequality was growing faster than any other: that of marriage.