The phrase “American family” once evoked the image of a breadwinning dad, homemaker mom, and their 2K kids in comfortable suburbia. No longer as divorces, single parenthood, and out-of-wedlock births rise. One largely overlooked agent of that change: our country’s growing fiscal inequality.

In a discussion of her book Marriage Markets, the University of Minnesota’s June Carbone – a former law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City – examines the impact of those economic forces on working-class and lower-income families in particular. They have produced a larger group of high-income men than women; written off the men at the bottom because of unemployment, incarceration, and substance abuse; and left a larger group of women with a smaller group of comparable men in the middle. Policy changes are needed, Carbone says.

The event marks Women’s Equality Week.