Monthly Archives: August 2009

Why Professional Women Marry Late

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“The timing of a first marriage is related to the attractiveness of the alternatives to marrying. When women value roles that provide viable alternatives to the role of wife, they delay marriage.”

(Allen, S. M. & Kalish, R. A. (1984). Professional women and marriage. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 46(5), 375-382.)

Dr de Bergerac is interested in this topic because she witnesses so many professional, attractive, intelligent women who are single and say they don’t want to be. They thrive in their careers, yet they do not seem to find The One. And those who do, do it much later than the population average. Why?

The scientific answer seems to be: they also have better things to do than the population average. If a date competes with a project at work that is fulfilling, bodes success and a higher income – then the date better be at least as fulfilling, easy-to-present-to-others, and liquid. Of course work and relationships fulfill different needs – but they also compete for the same, scarce resource: time. Professional women have less time and higher demands for relationships, given their alternative options. Both together are likely to keep them single.

Is there a way out other than asking the women to lower their standards? – Yes, outsourcing and delegation. Professional women could outsource the elements of dating they consider non-essential (to online matching services, professional marriage advisers..) and delegate those pieces of work they do not absolutely need for their career: let the intern pre-draft important emails and write the first version of the report. He’ll be thrilled and his boss will have more time to look for The One.

How do I know when I’ve met The One?

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Dear Economist,
thanks for your dating advice. Here’s my question: how will I know if I found the right person? How can I be sure that the person I am dating will be my soulmate?
Sincerely, Paul

The One

The One

The One

Dear Paul,

your question is a tough one indeed and I am not sure that economists have a satisfying answer. But here’s trying. Let’s structure the problem into pieces we can deal with. ‘Finding the One’ chiefly has three elements: (i) a set of selection criteria against which you evaluate potential mates, (ii) a set of selection criteria against which your favourite mate evaluates you, and (iii) factors of long-term compatibility.

Suprisingly, working on (i) is treated with negligence by many searching singles. It is important, however, that you know what you are looking for, before you look. Economists usually assume this as a given, in their language “people know their individual utility function”. In reality, that is not often the case. As a first step, I therefore advise that you sit down and figure out your utility function. What makes you happy? What are the characteristics that your future wife needs to have? –  It is ok to have a long list, as long as you prioritize it. In addition, I would advise to stick to criteria that are somehow measurable, or you have an idea about how to evaluate them. You also need to be aware of obvious trade-offs. I heard from a few young men that they want a mate that is both a successful go-getter in business and a meek stay-at-home mum. Needless to say, most of them are still searching. 

Once you have a complete wishlist, which is free of mutually exclusive items, we can move to issue (ii). This is a bit more tricky, as you don’t know The One yet. But you can explore the dating market and learn what the women that typically meet your criteria tend to fancy. If the dating market is a bit thin where you live, don’t hesitate to call on female friends and relatives who might have a good judgement of these preferences. In addition, there are some attributes nearly all women like. Unfortunately, some of them are discriminatory, such as ‘height’. But there’s nothing wrong with wearing (hidden) high soles. For example, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gerhard Schroeder are both guilty, I’ve been told. Women also often prefer a man that is more or less close to their own age. (For an overview of the general preferences of women, see Belot and Francesconi: “Can anyone be the one? Evidence on mate selection from Speed Dating”, Essex University, 2006).

If you have a grasp of both (i) and (ii), let’s explore issue (iii). What kind of persons do usually end up together, and it works?  – The answer to this has actually changed over time. The empirical literature has found that differences do no longer attract.  With the rise in women’s education and access to the labor market, marriages have increasingly been concluded between partners who are very much alike in terms of diplomas and earnings. Whereas in our granny’s generation the dominant model was the combination of earning and educated man with non-earning and less educated woman. In those times, the woman scientist, or poet, stayed often single. But the world has changed. Stable marriages usually involve equals. Think The Obamas rather than The Beckers.

As Fernandez, Guner and Knowles show (in “Love and Money: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Household Sorting and Inequality”, U of Pennsylvania, 2001), there is ‘positive assortative mating’ in marriages along the variables of education and income.  I.e. spouses are usually equally educated and equally rich. – It is likely that they are also ‘equal’ on a series of other attributes and habits, i.e.  taste for travels or sports, a talent for music, religious devotion….but these are usually not easily measured or reflected in publicly available data. But you can still check them out on a date.

In summary, we won’t be able to decide who is ‘The One’ for you. But we hope we’ve made your search a little more hopeful. Do let us know how it’s going.

Your Economist

Why Affection Matters And Conflict Doesn’t

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“Loss of initial levels of love and affection, rather than conflict, is the most salient predictor of distress and divorce…”

finds Ted Huston, Ph.D., a professor of human ecology and psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who followed 168 couples from their wedding day through 13 years of marriage, starting in 1981. According to his research, the development of a marriage during its first two years is the most significant predictor of later happy marriage or divorce. The amount of conflict in a couple was little important. However, a strong loss of affectionate and loving feelings during the first two years of a marriage predicted a later divorce very well.

Huston concludes “This ought to change the way we think about the early roots of what goes wrong in marriage. The dominant approach has been to work with couples to resolve conflict, but it should focus on preserving the positive feelings. That’s a very important take-home lesson.”

For more details, consider reading http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200001/will-your-marriage-last.

There are no women where I work. How do I go about finding a mate?

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Dear Economist,

I am 40, never married, and more than ready to settle down. But I work in a sector that is virtually free of women. So, although I don’t smell, am not dramatically stupid or unattractive, I do not meet enough eligible women to find a soulmate.  Do you know a way out? –  Sincerely, Out with the Guys.

Lonely Guy

Lonely Guy

Dear Out with the Guys,

a word of comfort: you are not alone with your problem. We regularly hear similar stories from IT geeks, engineers, and the army staff…just to name a few. We actually also hear them from primary school teachers, nurses and nannies….in short, any job where one gender vastly outnumbers the other.

You are suffering from a situation that George Stigler (‘The Economics of Information’, 1961) would call ‘high search costs’. You can meet women, get to know and date them, but your ‘cost’ of doing so is much higher than in an evenly gendered market. You probably have to travel to meet a woman of your age, spend more money on gas, the phone and mail to keep in touch, and spend more time thinking about where to meet the right woman. All these are ‘costs’.

As you can read from our previous post, the first phase of the dating game can be seen as a search effort, similar to checking out various products before we know the quality range available in the market. Checking out an additional product provides you with a knowledge gain about the quality range. But, as the range is given, and won’t expand with searching, the benefit of getting to know an additional item – or person, rather – diminishes with each person met.  At the same time, the cost of meeting another person stays the same, for each and every additional person met. In your case, this cost is rather high.

Usually, a rational person stops searching when the additional benefit of meeting another person has diminished so far that it is equal to the cost of meeting another person. In your case, if we leave everything as it is, this situation would actually occur rather early. You would date few people before you settle, because the cost is just so high. In other words, you are readier to commit than some of your fellow daters.

This in itself makes you quite eligible for the other gender. Women tend to get serious with men who are ready to get serious.

On the other hand, we don’t have to leave everything as it is. You can lower your search costs, e.g. by using online dating, matching services, newspaper ads; and also, old-fashioned but effective: drawing on family and friends networks. If you want to maximize your search efforts even further, target your outings from the Guys’ Enclave towards places where you are likely to find many women: kindergartens, spas, cosmetic and shoe shops, aerobics, dance and yoga classes, classical music concerts, church and synagogue, and book clubs, just to name a few. Also, if you weren’t in a Guys’ Enclave previously, think back to that time and the women you knew then: anybody you would like to get back in touch with?  – Go for it (as long as she’s still free and not an ex) and reap the benefit of previously invested search expenditure.  – We don’t promise miracles, but the above efforts should dramatically improve your likelihood of meeting Mrs. Right.  FYI, Dr de Bergerac and her spouse (re)met like that, when actually already well past thirty, and so did a couple among their friends.

Now that we have more or less devised a strategy, let’s look at the likely outcome of a situation like yours. Being the majority gender may actually not be the worst thing (depending on the ratio..) especially if you are a guy. It is true that usually, the ‘outnumbered’ gender is the secret winner of a gender ratio out of sync, enjoying the competition for their favours, and dictating the market rules. So if more men compete for less women, the women dictate the rules. Turns out that in a dating market, that is not the worst thing. Joshua Angrist of the MIT found out that in communities where men outnumber women, there are more marriages, men earn generally more and parents of young children earn more. (How do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets?, QJE 2002) Looks like in some areas of life, it’s ok to have the rules written by the ladies…

In any case, best of luck, and check back in with your success story.

Your Economist