9 ms·

Except many couples meet in school, where they'd be exposed to a disproportionate number of potential spouses within their own field of study, and maybe to a le

Except many couples meet in school, where they'd be exposed to a disproportionate number of potential spouses within their own field of study, and maybe to a lesser extent others in related programs within the same college. Which would also be skewed by things like length of study and personality types attracted to particular interests. Eg, Doctors and lawyers often don't want to get married until after school, at which point they've primarily been around other doctors and lawyers for the previous 3-7 years.

bumby 5y ago
I’ve read that one reason wealth inequality is worse today is because high-education-high-income individuals want to marry other HEHI individuals whereas in the past this wasn’t the case. If the claim about the past is true, it seems to undermine your point
- hadlock 5y ago
  Do you have a link to this article/study? I'd like to explore this concept more. I don't know if it's true but it certainly seems within the realm of possibility
  - bumby 5y ago
    I brought it up in another comment, but I believe it came from the book The Meritocracy Trap. Although, since I don't know the exact quote or underlying sources from memory, I could be mis-remembering
- whakim 5y ago
  Social class seems to have always played an important role in marriage (e.g. Jane Austen as a primer on 19th-century upperclass British society), so I'm not sure it's fair to say that this is change from the past. But I think it's fair to say that it is a factor in concentrating wealth.
  - QuarterReptile 5y ago
    The change is the soaring achievement levels of some woman where they achieve themselves right out of marriage-ability.
    - bumby 5y ago
      Can you elaborate on why high achieving women are less likely to get married? I think the research shows the opposite and the marriages tend to last longer
      - QuarterReptile 5y ago
        At the individual level, yes, there will probably always be a man outcompeting any woman at the top of a competitive field. But on a population level, the instability [0] of matches where the woman out-earns the man means that the pattern of women outnumbering men in ever-more prestigious fields is going to leave some very successful women without good matches. And foregoing that weaker match has increasingly little apparent downside when you're finding some career satisfaction and materially very comfortable. I think you're referring to the fact that successful marriages are largely becoming a luxury good, but these can both be true for a couple of reasons. First, using education as a proxy for attainment (please give me something better, because I haven't found it) I struggle to find statistics going past four year degrees to really talk about the top or competitive fields, and that isn't sufficient. Second, it seems reasonable to me that the women (and men) excelling professionally would have, on average, better chances of making a marriage work; it may be that a strong correlation between women's propensity for success in career and success in marriage is obscuring a negative effect of outlier-achievement on rates of getting and staying married that is also coming into play. Besides all this, it's consistent with what I encounter in my daily life. [0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w19023 https://www.nber.org/papers/w19023
        bumby 5y ago
        >women outnumbering men in ever-more prestigious fields is going to leave some very successful women without good matches. I agree with your post but the quote above speaks to my original point further up the thread. The fact that this assumes that the only suitable mate is one of the same career status is part of what drivers income inequality. Other than that, the only other proxy for attainment is income but it’s still the same story
- eCa 5y ago
  It wasn’t that long ago (at least over here in Europe) that very few women[1] made it to anything High Income, so such couplings were rarer. [1] Relatively speaking
- beerandt 5y ago
  Why? In the past (pre 1960s/70s/80s) spouses largely didn't meet in college/university level education or at the workplace, or if they did, it wasn't as peers. But my point isn't so much that people meet in college, so much as there isn't really a good way to adjust statistical measurements to account for the popularity of a particular field/job, as was suggested up thread. There are way too many related, interdependent, conflicting variables, with common field of study being a major one, even for the smaller disciplines.
  - bumby 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, makes you think they didn’t? I mean, it was prevalent enough to coin a derogatory term for women who attended college for the explicit intent to be a wife [1]. I not sure I agree there isn’t a way to adjust for other variables, but I will concede it doesn’t seem like the data went that far. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRS_Degree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRS_Degree
- nxm 5y ago
  Men generally do not care about the income of their wife, as that's not what they're innately attracted to. Hypergamy is characteristic of women and hence they want to marry up, and won't settle for someone who makes less than them. The latter is a reason for why there are so many educated but unmarried women today in their 30s and 40s.
  - nostrebored 5y ago
    > women are attracted to money and status! Not men!!! Professionals I know in the 20-35 cohort only want to date other professionals. The ones that don’t want some weird stay at home trophy wife dynamic. There’s nothing provably innate about some men preferring trophy wives. There is a lot of availability due to cultural baggage. The phenomenon that you’re talking about is culturally bound. Anecdotally my wife makes ~150k more per year than me. She’s made more than me for like 80% of our relationship. I’ve stayed at home with our son. We’re still top 1%. Neither of us care.
    - itchyouch 5y ago
      My limited observation is that women use HEHI as signal and as a filtering mechanism, otherwise non-HEHI men that could otherwise be candidates end up providing signal circumstantially through introductions, or a common environment that provides opportunities for serendipitous bonding to occur.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Men use it as a filter too, in my cohort (mid 30s, coastal US cities). A second six figure income in the partnership provides a lot of ease of mind, and is almost required if your goal is to live in certain neighborhoods. I would say it is probably true that a smaller proportion of men use it as strong of a signal as women do, but that makes sense to me considering women have a decent risk of not being able to earn income due to childbirth and child rearing.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      It’s not a weird dynamic. There is a threshold where if your partner isn’t making some meaningful amount of money relative to you, it’s better for them to just not work at all than spend 40 hours a week toiling away for a pittance of a paycheck. What is there to gain from having a wife work as a cashier when you make 10x as much as her? You either want to be a power couple or just get the best partner you can and offer them a comfortable life. The relationships that are an exception to this are usually ones where both people started off equally and then one of them suddenly became massively successful but they still remain in love.
chiph 5y ago
We had one woman in my graduating comp-sci class. One. And she had been dating someone seriously for a few years. We guys had better luck dating Early Childhood Education majors, which is supported by their chart.
- roland35 5y ago
  Yes, I knew my wife before she went into teaching but it is a good match!
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    How, I don't really get it?
    - toyg 5y ago
      I think the joke is that Early Childhood Education studies are followed overwhelmingly by women.
      - AussieWog93 5y ago
        I think it's a bit more than that. There's the gender gap, which you mentioned, as well as the economic aspect, but I wouldn't discount the fact (or at least perception?) that people who choose to work with children are more likely to act in a caring and maternal way towards your typical aspie engineer (as opposed to the more common judgemental and standoffish approach). At least that's my mum's theory.

bumby 5y ago

I’ve read that one reason wealth inequality is worse today is because high-education-high-income individuals want to marry other HEHI individuals whereas in the past this wasn’t the case. If the claim about the past is true, it seems to undermine your point

hadlock 5y ago
Do you have a link to this article/study? I'd like to explore this concept more. I don't know if it's true but it certainly seems within the realm of possibility
- bumby 5y ago
  I brought it up in another comment, but I believe it came from the book The Meritocracy Trap. Although, since I don't know the exact quote or underlying sources from memory, I could be mis-remembering
whakim 5y ago
Social class seems to have always played an important role in marriage (e.g. Jane Austen as a primer on 19th-century upperclass British society), so I'm not sure it's fair to say that this is change from the past. But I think it's fair to say that it is a factor in concentrating wealth.
- QuarterReptile 5y ago
  The change is the soaring achievement levels of some woman where they achieve themselves right out of marriage-ability.
  - bumby 5y ago
    Can you elaborate on why high achieving women are less likely to get married? I think the research shows the opposite and the marriages tend to last longer
    - QuarterReptile 5y ago
      At the individual level, yes, there will probably always be a man outcompeting any woman at the top of a competitive field. But on a population level, the instability [0] of matches where the woman out-earns the man means that the pattern of women outnumbering men in ever-more prestigious fields is going to leave some very successful women without good matches. And foregoing that weaker match has increasingly little apparent downside when you're finding some career satisfaction and materially very comfortable. I think you're referring to the fact that successful marriages are largely becoming a luxury good, but these can both be true for a couple of reasons. First, using education as a proxy for attainment (please give me something better, because I haven't found it) I struggle to find statistics going past four year degrees to really talk about the top or competitive fields, and that isn't sufficient. Second, it seems reasonable to me that the women (and men) excelling professionally would have, on average, better chances of making a marriage work; it may be that a strong correlation between women's propensity for success in career and success in marriage is obscuring a negative effect of outlier-achievement on rates of getting and staying married that is also coming into play. Besides all this, it's consistent with what I encounter in my daily life. [0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w19023 https://www.nber.org/papers/w19023
      - bumby 5y ago
        >women outnumbering men in ever-more prestigious fields is going to leave some very successful women without good matches. I agree with your post but the quote above speaks to my original point further up the thread. The fact that this assumes that the only suitable mate is one of the same career status is part of what drivers income inequality. Other than that, the only other proxy for attainment is income but it’s still the same story
eCa 5y ago
It wasn’t that long ago (at least over here in Europe) that very few women[1] made it to anything High Income, so such couplings were rarer. [1] Relatively speaking
beerandt 5y ago
Why? In the past (pre 1960s/70s/80s) spouses largely didn't meet in college/university level education or at the workplace, or if they did, it wasn't as peers. But my point isn't so much that people meet in college, so much as there isn't really a good way to adjust statistical measurements to account for the popularity of a particular field/job, as was suggested up thread. There are way too many related, interdependent, conflicting variables, with common field of study being a major one, even for the smaller disciplines.
- bumby 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, makes you think they didn’t? I mean, it was prevalent enough to coin a derogatory term for women who attended college for the explicit intent to be a wife [1]. I not sure I agree there isn’t a way to adjust for other variables, but I will concede it doesn’t seem like the data went that far. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRS_Degree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRS_Degree
nxm 5y ago
Men generally do not care about the income of their wife, as that's not what they're innately attracted to. Hypergamy is characteristic of women and hence they want to marry up, and won't settle for someone who makes less than them. The latter is a reason for why there are so many educated but unmarried women today in their 30s and 40s.
- nostrebored 5y ago
  > women are attracted to money and status! Not men!!! Professionals I know in the 20-35 cohort only want to date other professionals. The ones that don’t want some weird stay at home trophy wife dynamic. There’s nothing provably innate about some men preferring trophy wives. There is a lot of availability due to cultural baggage. The phenomenon that you’re talking about is culturally bound. Anecdotally my wife makes ~150k more per year than me. She’s made more than me for like 80% of our relationship. I’ve stayed at home with our son. We’re still top 1%. Neither of us care.
  - itchyouch 5y ago
    My limited observation is that women use HEHI as signal and as a filtering mechanism, otherwise non-HEHI men that could otherwise be candidates end up providing signal circumstantially through introductions, or a common environment that provides opportunities for serendipitous bonding to occur.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Men use it as a filter too, in my cohort (mid 30s, coastal US cities). A second six figure income in the partnership provides a lot of ease of mind, and is almost required if your goal is to live in certain neighborhoods. I would say it is probably true that a smaller proportion of men use it as strong of a signal as women do, but that makes sense to me considering women have a decent risk of not being able to earn income due to childbirth and child rearing.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    It’s not a weird dynamic. There is a threshold where if your partner isn’t making some meaningful amount of money relative to you, it’s better for them to just not work at all than spend 40 hours a week toiling away for a pittance of a paycheck. What is there to gain from having a wife work as a cashier when you make 10x as much as her? You either want to be a power couple or just get the best partner you can and offer them a comfortable life. The relationships that are an exception to this are usually ones where both people started off equally and then one of them suddenly became massively successful but they still remain in love.

chiph 5y ago

We had one woman in my graduating comp-sci class. One. And she had been dating someone seriously for a few years. We guys had better luck dating Early Childhood Education majors, which is supported by their chart.

roland35 5y ago
Yes, I knew my wife before she went into teaching but it is a good match!
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  How, I don't really get it?
  - toyg 5y ago
    I think the joke is that Early Childhood Education studies are followed overwhelmingly by women.
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      I think it's a bit more than that. There's the gender gap, which you mentioned, as well as the economic aspect, but I wouldn't discount the fact (or at least perception?) that people who choose to work with children are more likely to act in a caring and maternal way towards your typical aspie engineer (as opposed to the more common judgemental and standoffish approach). At least that's my mum's theory.