Dollars and Sex (17 page)
Authors: Marina Adshade
Kerwin Kofi Charles and Ming Ching Luoh's research presents evidence that an increase in the incarceration rate by just 1 percentage point leads to a 2.4-percentage-point decrease in the proportion of women who have ever been married. They argue that 13 percent of the decline in the marriage rate since 1990 can be explained by increased male incarceration alone. Black women have been the most affected by the shortage of men, with increased incarceration explaining about 18 percent of the decline in marriage of black women since 1990.
If incarceration and differential education rates by gender can explain why fewer and fewer black women are marrying, then what explains the fact that educated black men are also marrying at lower rates than they did in the past? We might be tempted to predict that they would marry at higher, not lower, rates as they have become scarce relative to women who are looking for an educated husband. But that clearly hasn't been the case.
Just as educated black men have a higher value on the marriage market when women outnumber them, their relative scarcity also gives them market power on the casual dating and sex market. Educated black men presumably do not worry that by postponing marriage they are hurting their future marriage prospects, and so they can choose, if they wish, to wait until they have tired of the casual sex market before marrying. If they decide to marry later, as a result of the gender imbalance, then of course marriage rates for those men will appear to be low at any particular point in time.
FINAL WORDSI don't expect my economic marriage vows to be very popular, but maybe there is something to be said for acknowledging that no one is perfect. I would like to find a man who is almost as well educated as I am, for example, because it would be nice if we had that much in common. But I might change my mind about that if I met a man who had less education than me and was extremely physically fit, for example. I would be willing to make this trade-off not only because physically fit men are easy on the eyes (they are), but because I would like to find a man who has a better chance at living to an older age. Sure, I would like to have a man who is both well educated and physically fit, but if I can't find one (or, perhaps more to the point, I can't find one who wants to be with me), then I have to choose what is more important to meâfitness or education.
I argued earlier that without taking into consideration economic forces, our understanding of the world around us is incomplete. This is particularly true when we seek to understand the way in which people choose life partners. One of the most important concepts in economics is that of
opportunity cost
âthe potential benefit that is lost when we choose an alternative option. Being in a committed romantic relationship is all about deciding that the benefits of being in a relationship are greater than the opportunity costsâthe benefits to being in an alternative relationship or, even, no relationship at all.
Opportunity costs are subject to economic forces and, as a result, evolve as the economy evolves. Seen within that perspective, it isn't that surprising that as education has become a more-important determinant of how much income we earn, as men's comparative advantage over women in waged employment has dissipated, and as opportunities for skilled employment have drawn workers into urban environments, we have changed how we choose our partners.
All of these economic factors have shaped marriage today and will continue to shape marriages in the future. The importance of accepting that is reinforced when we acknowledge that the relationship between
marriage and economic factors goes both waysâmen and woman take their marriage-market potential into consideration when making important economic decisions. Looking forward, the evolution of the gender wage and education gaps (just to give two examples of economic outcomes) will be shaped, to some degree, by how individuals behave on marriage markets.
Once people marry, the importance of opportunity cost doesn't disappear; the value that individuals have on the marriage market (or, more to the point, the remarriage market), the greater bargaining power they have within their own marriage. That is the topic for
chapter 6
, which we will turn to after we take some time to talk about the fine institution of marriage, from a legal and societal perspective.
MARRIAGE IS A FINE INSTITUTION
MARRIAGE IS AN INSTITUTIONMae West famously said, “Marriage is a fine institutionâbut I'm not ready for an institution yet.” And she was right; marriage is a fine
institution
âin the economic sense of the word. Institutions to an economist are simply the rules and beliefs that govern human social behavior. So while sociologists and anthropologists have spent over fifty years debating the definition of marriage, economists are content to understand that marriage refers to the actions that individuals take that define what it means to be a family in that individual's community.
The usefulness of thinking about marriage as an institution is that what it means to be “married” is not carved in stone; the institution has varied significantly from place to place, from community to community, and, importantly, over time. While individuals within a community cannot choose the form of marriage institution adopted by their communityâthat is something that is decided by the community as a wholeâother factors,
economic
factors, determine how the institution evolves over time.
For example, historically the majority of the world's societies have recognized marriage as the union of one man and several women: heterosexual polygyny. A few have recognized marriage as the union of one man and one woman: heterosexual monogamy. A very small number of societies have recognized alternative arrangements like polyamory (multiple husbands and wives) and polyandry (one wife with multiple husbands).
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARRIAGE
How marital relationships were organized among our ancient ancestors was very closely related to way they accumulated food.
Early foragers (between 5 million and 1.8 million years ago) lived in a primal horde with no long-term mating. Males and females had sex with many partners, and any food sharing was principally in exchange for sexual favors (which, by the way, went not only in both directions but also between same-gender pairs). Because the diet consisted of fruits, nuts, and insects that could be gathered while still carrying and protecting a baby, males were not needed as protectors or providers, making marriage redundant.
As the climate warmed and the forests receded, humans began to move out into the savanna where their diet consisted of gathered vegetation, scavenged meat left behind by predators, and, eventually, meat killed by hunters using tools. Increased meat in their diet meant that babies were born earlier and required more care from their mothers if they were to survive. Resources were spread evenly among men and, as a result, monogamy was the marriage institution that prevailed in this period (between 1.8 million and 23,000 years ago). Really, though, the best descriptor of marriage in this era is serial monogamy, since couples only stayed together long enough to ensure the survival of their offspring (about four years).
Between 23,000 and 10,000 years ago, people started to become agriculturalists, growing their own food. The invention of the plow over 4,000 years ago led to the division of tasks into those that were done by men and those that were done by women. Agriculture also meant that men
could accumulate wealth, bringing an end to the equality among men that had existed in previous eras. Despite this inequality, monogamy prevailed, possibly because fieldwork made it impossible for a husband to guard more than one wife.
There is another theory, put forward by Brooks Kaiser and me, that humans were biologically hardwired for monogamy because that was the institution that ensured the greatest survival of children, and that certain types of agriculture, particularly dairy farming, encouraged the persistence of that marriage institution despite inequality between men. This was because dairy animals produce pair-bonding hormones, encouraging monogamy even when agriculture encouraged polygyny.
Supporting this theory is the observation that communities in those areas in which cattle farming was prevalent, such as in Europe, mostly practiced monogamy while those in areas that did not, such as in Africa, mostly practiced polygyny.
Most countries today that have monogamy as the legal structure for marriage in reality practice a form of marriage that is better described by the term “serial monogamy”âa marriage system in which one man or one woman can have multiple husbands or wives (so, effectively polygamy)âbut are permitted to be married to only one partner at any given point in time.
When we compare the economies of countries with institutionalized serial monogamy to those with institutionalized polygamy, we find that the industrialized nations of the world, without exception, have rejected
polygamy as a marriage institution. This observation is a bit of a mystery to economists, for reasons I will describe in a minute, but it illustrates the link between the nature of a country's economy and the form of marriage institution recognized by the government.
A second example of the relationship between economics and marriage institutions is the willingness of the wealthy nations of the world to institutionalize marriage between two men or two women (same-sex monogamy). The individual citizens of countries that have legally recognized same-sex monogamous marriage (or, in some cases, civil unions) may not all feel that same-sex monogamy is “marriage” in their books, but institutional change doesn't require everyone in the community to be on board; a change in the legal framework (i.e., the rules) is all that is required for institutional change to take place.
The relationship between same-sex monogamy and national wealth is less of a mystery than the relationship between serial monogamy and national wealth; one of the reasons nations have been able to accumulate wealth is that their respect for individual rights and freedoms has created an innovative environment in which new technologies flourish. It is this same respect for individual rights and freedoms that have made it possible for advocates of same-sex marriage to fight and win their battles for legal recognition for same-sex monogamous unions. So economic development hasn't made same-sex marriage possible, but rather the same qualities that made it possible for countries to grow rich have also made them more open to institutional change in marriage.
Before talking more about institutions, let me first give you an example of the role economics plays in how individual households choose the way in which their marriages are organized and how those individual choices translate into society-wide adoption of that form of organization.
BILL GATES'S HOUSE HAS ITS OWN WIKIPEDIA PAGEAccording to its Wikipedia page, Bill Gates's home is a 66,000-square-foot mansion nicknamed Xanadu after the fictional estate owned by the recluse, Charles Kane, in the movie
Citizen Kane
. Gates lives there with his
wife, Melinda, suggesting that he is probably less lonely than the owner of the original (albeit fictitious) Xanadu who lived, and died, alone in his gothic home.