The Real Reason Richer People Marry

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-richer-people-marry.html?gwh=5E4DCFA873DEAA75E54E33A50662A613&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

36 27 12 years ago

nytimes.com

ars• 12 years ago

This sentence makes no sense:

"Unlike their ancestors in the late 1800s, many of today’s working-class young adults have responded to the difficulty of marrying by living with a partner and having children outside of marriage."

What difficulty in marrying? I could understand a difficulty in living together and having kids. But marrying? That's just a piece of paper. It makes little difference for people who already have a family together.

I think that people simply don't value that paper - it means little to them except maybe an expense for a large party.

Any analysis of marriage rates should consider people who cohabitatate to be married for the purpose of understanding family trends.

wheaties• 12 years ago

Or watching your loved one's paycheck be taxed higher because they married you (high income households.) See that they no longer are eligible for certain government programs that they depended on because your combined incomes are just high enough (lower incomes.) Certain low income homes we looked when I was younger looked at households income. No surprise that there were mostly single mothers who lived there.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

Or watching your loved one's paycheck be taxed higher because they married you

I'm pretty sure that's not normally how it works. Married couples have the same deduction (well, it's doubled, but they file only one return) and tax rates on a couple are lower:

    Income between 40,000 - 40,050
    Tax if filing single: 5,935
    Tax if married filing jointly: 5,111

    Income between 80,000 - 80,050
    Tax if filing single: 15,935
    Tax if married filing jointly: 11,864

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf

Please notice that two single people making $40k each pay $5,935, while one married couple making $80k pays $11,864.

    $5,935 * 2 = $11,870

As for no longer qualifying for low-income grants or programs, most of those take marital status into consideration much like the standard deduction- a family making $10,000 is going to qualify for a lot more than a single person making $10,000

throwaway90446• 12 years ago

You're probably not up to speed with the cultural expectations of the ceremony itself in the modern U.S.

In terms of social signaling, an elaborate, extravagant ceremony, preceded by presentation of an outrageously expensive conflict diamond, is REQUIRED. Even if not in real reality, in the "reality" of social mores and expectations.

jemfinch• 12 years ago

I read that entire article and I still don't understand the real reason richer people marry.

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

I'm glad it wasn't just me. I had to go back and check the title again once I was finished to make sure I didn't miss it.

WTH, NYT? Editor's day off?

Best I can figure, "Income inequality can be correlated with different rates of marriage" could be both the title and the entire article.

xercex4• 12 years ago

Simple:

1) Richer people are mostly smarter. Smarter people see through the toxic culture and seek to marry.

2) Wealthy people are often so because they do things that help build wealth and success, Ie. marriage. Smart people descended from smart married people are more likely to follow their parents warnings about the destructiveness of the toxic culture which attacks marriage.

rifung• 12 years ago

What toxic culture are we talking about exactly? I don't recall anything in the article saying anything about anyone "attacking" marriage.

javert• 12 years ago

Why do you claim that getting married is smarter and helps build wealth and success?

cageface2• 12 years ago

Did you even read the article?

But some digging into historical census records shows that social class differences in marriage have been tied to the extent of income inequality among white Americans for at least 130 years. They also suggest that commentators who insist that the marriage gap is wholly a matter of values are almost surely wrong.

Hytosys• 12 years ago

This is dangerously brash and unsupported conjecture unless you've got relevant studies readily available.

ams6110• 12 years ago

It's an opinion piece, not a news article. His main argument is the last sentence: What’s happened is that the kinds of jobs that would get them off the couch [and motivated to marry] have become scarce in our unequal economy.

michaelochurch4• 12 years ago

Different explanation, and some of this ain't pretty. (Apologies if this is male-centric, but it's probably quite similar for women.)

Richer people (or, at least, socioeconomically comfortable people) establish masculinity and effectiveness by building successful families. If you're happy at work and your kids are doing great and you're intellectually engaged, one woman is enough for most men. That obscene sex drive of the 17-year-old (that, if it could be realized at that age, would be horrific) is long gone. At 30 with a decent socioeconomic life, you can be satisfied with one woman as long as she's basically good to you, because you're happy and don't need sexual variety.

For some men, this isn't an option. It might be a lack of long-term, decent employment. It might be a family situation that he can't extricate himself from. Or, he might be externally successful and have "the perfect life" from a distance but be ridiculously insecure. Most men who cheat are horribly insecure (which may explain their tendency to "cheat down"). I hate the stud/slut dichotomy because (a) it seems to equate insecurity with moral weakness (and while sexual immorality is revolting, promiscuity isn't necessarily immoral, even if unwise for most people) and (b) the truth is that most promiscuous men are just as insecure as promiscuous women, so there's no justification for the differential perception of male as victor and female as conquered.

If you want to go deeper into the theory behind this, humans actually have two sex drives, one geared toward r-selection and the other toward K-selection. Stereotypically, the r-drive is stronger in the young (15-25) and male; the K-drive starts to dominate at age 18-20 for women and 25-30 for men. The K-drive is the "work hard, build a nest, find one partner you really like, maybe start a family" sexual drive. But if it's frustrated due to socioeconomic insecurity, people are more willing to let themselves be distracted by the promiscuous r-drive. This can be OK if it's all consensual and no one's being cheated on... but if it's furtive and dishonest, it's awful.

This isn't about a difference in values between social classes. I don't think that there is one. The (small) upper class is its own beast and assessing it would take time from what I'm trying to say... but the truth about family values is that, from lower to upper-middle class, and in all racial and religious categories, and even between straights and gays these days... there's much more variation within categories than between them. The marriage gap isn't about a discrepancy in values or "morality" (if that even applies, and I'm not convinced that it should) but in behavior. We aren't more moral than the people in the ghettos. We just behave differently because we're under a different and mostly less severe set of stressors.

Plenty of people associate wealth with the opportunity toward promiscuity ("two chicks at the same time") but the empirical facts are that (a) promiscuity hardly requires money, social skills and tactics ("Game") being more important, and (b) most people who are socioeconomically comfortable have little interest in promiscuity after age 25.

Comfortable people (a better adjective than "rich", because some objectively rich people are financially reckless, uncomfortable, and miserable) are more likely to marry because, with a low level of stress, most people are influenced much more strongly by the K-selective sex drive after age 25 (if not earlier).

apsec112• 12 years ago

"If you want to go deeper into the theory behind this, humans actually have two sex drives, one geared toward r-selection and the other toward K-selection."

Human sexuality is very complex, and has had evolutionary pressure on it from many different directions... but that's not how the science works. I'll let Slate Star Codex explain (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/20/ozys-anti-heartiste-faq...):

"Is it true that some humans are r-selected, which means they’re promiscuous and want to have lots of children, and some humans are k-selected, which means they invest in a few children?

No.

For one thing, r/k selection theory was shown to be a vast oversimplification of life-history evolution forty years ago. For another thing, it applies on a species level, not on an individual level. Humans as a species are absurdly k-selected. How many species can you think of that have young that are totally helpless for their first decade of life? r/k selection theory would argue that we wouldn’t have casual sex, because humans are not remotely r-selected on any conceivable level! Clearly, this is not the case, which ought to make one wonder how applicable this is to human beings anyway."

Here is a paper going into the details of the science: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~taylor/z652/Reznicketal.pdf

michaelochurch4• 12 years ago

Is it true that some humans are r-selected, which means they’re promiscuous and want to have lots of children, and some humans are k-selected, which means they invest in a few children?

This is not what I'm saying. If you look at any human's ancestry, you're going to find both influences. The last thing I intend to say is that there are meaningful differences between humans (either at an individual or group level) on this front. My point is that both sex drives exist, because both are a part of our evolutionary story.

Humans as a species are absurdly k-selected. How many species can you think of that have young that are totally helpless for their first decade of life? r/k selection theory would argue that we wouldn’t have casual sex, because humans are not remotely r-selected on any conceivable level!

My argument is that all humans are both, each to some degree, although the K-drive is more socially acceptable, civilized, and progressive... and probably the stronger one in most of us.

Being r-selective is actually very adaptive during times of ecological stress, such as after a population crash. K-selection is more fruitful when population is at saturation and the only available growth is civilization's progress. I don't intend to moralize on this. We needed both drives to get us where we are. You're right that, as applies to any specific animal, the r/K selection theory is a bit simplistic because almost all advanced organisms exhibit traits derived from both evolutionary imperatives (quality and quantity). For example, trees are K-selective in terms of being durable and large, but r-selective in terms of having many seeds.

As for "we wouldn't have casual sex", I'm not so sure that there's an either/or. Humans are an advanced animal and, given both our cognitive capability (and flexibility) and our numbers, it's quite reasonable to assume that human behavior includes the full spectrum of strategies. It's not unreasonable to suppose that humans are predisposed to r-selective behavior when young (15-25) and K-driven behavior when older (25+).

yummyfajitas2• 12 years ago

We just behave differently because we're under a different and mostly less severe set of stressors.

I don't buy the explanation that "stressors" are somehow the cause. Here in India marriage is sky high, yet stressors of any sort are vastly higher.

Further, when discussing economic incentives, it doesn't make sense to discuss lack of money. Marriage is cheaper than being single due to economies of scale (a lot like having a roommate) and having a more stable income source (assuming 2 earners, it's unlikely both will simultaneously lose their job).

michaelochurch4• 12 years ago

I don't buy the explanation that "stressors" are somehow the cause. Here in India marriage is sky high, yet stressors of any sort are vastly higher.

I was making an argument that holds within one culture. My point was that there isn't really a difference in values between different social classes in the U.S. but a difference in behavior. I was trying to refute the (classist and often racist) claim often made in the US that the poor have a lack of "family values".

Change the social background and you change the values and the behavior, and all bets are off.

serve_yay• 12 years ago

Boy oh boy.

hndissapointed• 12 years ago

I am inclined to agree with much of what you said (though, not all of it). However, you are making a lot of claims without supplying us with supporting evidence. Can you please provide names of books, studies, or links, etc.?

Specifically, for statements where you claim it is empirical fact:

but the empirical facts are that (a) promiscuity hardly requires money, social skills and tactics ("Game") being more important, and (b) most people who are socioeconomically comfortable have little interest in promiscuity after age 25.

If you can't supply external evidence of your claims, then please refrain from making such claims in the first place. However, if you do have evidence then I am genuinely interested in studying up on this. :)

michaelochurch4• 12 years ago

I read a lot of different stuff, but Jared Diamond's work helps on early civilization, and so does Simon Baron Cohen's work on gender. Robert Sapolsky's work on baboons and other primate research also gives us a lot of insight into what we were before we became human.

If you want to learn about modern "Game"/PUA-land (which is a pre-monogamous culture-- and, thankfully, a non-reproductive one-- that has erupted in 21st-century North America) there's a lot of research on that, but it's depressing and probably not worth your time unless you're a sociopath.

clay_to_n• 12 years ago

Not the most well-written article for NYT, but interesting point and good visual. I think the "real reason" according to the author is simply that they have more money (as opposed to having better morals, culture, or whatever). It makes sense that marriage is unattractive if you're a working class male who doesn't think he could support a family.

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