Their study included data on children who were born around 1980, roughly the same time period as the data we used. It measured enrollment by age 19; the data we used measured enrollment by age 21. In the bottom income quartile, about one-third of the children who started college had earned a bachelor’s degree by the time they were 25.
It does not seem to simply delay marriage; the researchers found very similar patterns when they looked at the data up to age 30. The places that made marriage more likely at 26 also tended to make it more likely at age 30. The children in the study aren’t yet old enough for conclusions beyond age 30.
By comparison, a childhood in Manhattan, on the other end of the spectrum, makes marriage only 12 percentage points less likely.