It’s not unusual for a woman to get whispered from her grandmother that an advanced degree could hurt her in the marriage market. Despite the fact that more women than men now attend college, the idea that smart women finish last in love seems to hang on and on. "There were so many misperceptions about education and marriage that I decided to sort out the facts," said economist Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. So along with Wharton colleague Adam Isen, Stevenson crunched national marriage data from 1950 to 2008 and found that the marriage penalty women once paid for being well educated has largely disappeared. Expectations have changed dramatically in the last half century. "In the 1950s, a lot of women thought they needed to marry right away," said Coontz, a family historian at Evergreen State College, "Real wages were rising so quickly that men in their 20s could afford to marry early. But they didn’t want a woman who was their equal; they wanted a woman who looked up to the man. Men needed and wanted someone who knew less." The new research has more good news for college grads. Stevenson said the data indicate that modern college-educated women are more likely than other groups of women to be married at age 40, are less likely to divorce, and are more likely to describe their marriages as "happy" (no matter what their income). The marriages of well-educated women tend to be more stable because the brides are usually older as well as wiser, Stevenson said. Researchers have long known that the older people are when they marry, the more likely that the marriage will last. College-educated couples are also more likely to marry for companionship and love and compatibility rather than for financial security. "Among college graduates today, only 6 percent say that financial security is the most important reason to marry, compared with 20 percent of those without a college degree," said Stevenson, "Better-educated couples tend to think of themselves as equal partners." That’s another big change from the past. "For women, financial stability used to be the most important reason for marriage," Coontz said. "Today, educated women are a lot less concerned about how much their husband earns, and more interested in whether he is willing to share child care and housework.\ According to Stevenson, modern well-educated women are happily married because ______.
A. they have more political power B. they are financially independent C. they are older and more sensible D. they know more and are more graceful