
Theology majors marry each other a lot, but business majors don’t - johnny313
https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/theology-majors-marry-each-other-a-lot-but-business-majors-dont-and-other-tales-of-bas-and-marriage/
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danielvf
This could very well just be from the small numbers in the survey and group.

In 2016, 1,920,718 people graduated with a BA in the USA. Of those 9,800 were
theology majors. The survey data used only covered roughly 26,000 people,
which would give us an expected 131 theology majors. 31% of those, or forty,
married each other, giving us only twenty surveyed theology-theology marriages
over an eight year period.

And there were even fewer Architecture graduates and marriages.

~~~
JadeNB
Several of the current top comments
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941770)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941603)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941307))
explain why this makes sense. I very much appreciate the parent's explanation
of why, however sensible it is, one might be sceptical of this result.

From my perspective, the point is that it's often very easy to come up with a
_post hoc_ explanation of why the effect you see is the one you would have
expected; and, had the numbers come out the other way, there probably would
have been just as many people who could explain why _that_ was the expected
outcome.

The power of statistics is that it abstracts away from what should be or what
we'd expect to what _is_ , whether it is intuitive or non-. The price paid for
this power is that it's very easy to ask questions that seem reasonable but
aren't, so that one gets an answer to a precisely defined, rigorous question
but misinterprets it as an answer to a possibly ill defined, less rigorous
question; and that, to me, is what the parent comment is forcing us to
remember.

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phd514
This is not surprising to me as I expect that the average pair of theology
majors has more in common from the perspective of worldview and values,
important things to share with a spouse, than the average pair of business
majors.

~~~
vanderZwan
Similarly but subtly different: you can also look at things that matter to
people that are more or less common. Theology majors probably have more
uncommon important values than business majors do. So it should be much easier
to find a non-business major with matching values for business majors, than it
is for non-theology majors and theology majors

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highdesertmuse
Theology majors may represent a greater proportion of believers in pre-marital
sexual abstinance than do business majors, therefore weighting the odds in
favor of marriage.

~~~
kartan
> Theology majors may represent a greater proportion of believers in pre-
> marital sexual abstinance than do business majors

Or maybe Theology majors have a higher pregnancy rate and "need" to marry more
often. ;)

Any theory is as good as any other without more data or a way to test it.

~~~
mythrwy
I don't believe you need a massive set of data to reason that people who study
theology are more likely to be religiously inclined though. So I'd say
grandparents theory appears more likely.

~~~
jlg23
I only know one person who studied theology and she experienced her first
religious service 2.5 years into her studies.

Yes, even things we believe to be true we have to put evidence for on the
table in scientific discourse.

~~~
rxhernandez
I have met tens of former theology majors; all of them were very religious.
100% were catholic school teachers or priests though.

------
Alex3917
This makes sense, given that if you major in theology you are likely going to
a small unaccredited school with only a few dozen or a few hundred students
from very similar backgrounds.

I'd expect that if you looked at religious studies majors instead, you
wouldn't see any especially unusual marriage patterns.

~~~
gowld
This comment is prejudiced and incorrect in every possible way.

The next highest majors are Agriculture and then Architecture. How does that
fit into your just-so-story?

Philosophy/ReligiousStudies is the 8th most extreme outlier, right after
Liberal Arts.

Further, the article isn't about majors of _students_ getting married, it's
about majors of _graduates_ getting married.

~~~
marchenko
I wonder if there is a degree of separation from other students influencing
the homogamy here: theology is often taught in a separate school of Divinity
(eg Harvard), and at least some large universities have separate schools of
Agriculture and Architecture ( eg Cornell).

~~~
Alex3917
I did my undergrad in the Cornell ag school. In practice it just meant having
one class a semester in a different building. There wasn't any meaningful
impact on my social life, other than becoming unusually proficient at
identifying mushrooms. If you go through a super intensive program like
architecture or medical school then that's going to have a huge impact on your
life, but whether or not that program is in its own school probably doesn't
matter.

------
fvrghl
Here is an interactive version: [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-
marries-whom/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/)

------
AimHere
I'd like to see whether there's a correlation here between gender imbalance in
the particular subject and the marriage rate. I suspect theology is a heavily
male-dominated subject, since a large number of the associated careers are
either formally male-only or traditionally male-dominated.

I'm wondering if this might be a case where the men outnumber women so much
that a high proportion of the women in the field can easily find suitable men
to pair off with without going further than their college.

Checking whether other male-dominated subjects have similarly high intra-major
marriage rates would test this(I don't know what they are, offhand, but I
suspect a lot of STEM subjects might be there), and also doing the gender-
reversed study (where it goes by the first marriage of the husband) might get
similar results with more female-heavy subjects.

~~~
gowld
The article is about graduates, not students, so this comment bears no
relation to any of the relevant facs.

~~~
AimHere
Wouldn't married graduates be disproportionately likely to initially meet each
other as students?

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kristianc
Anecdata, but in my year at Oxford I heard stories about people going to
Theology drinks with one eye on meeting potential life partners.

~~~
notadoc
There's also the very old corny joke that many people attend college to get
their "MRS" or "MR" degree.

But there is some truth to it since many partners meet in college, if not at a
job requiring a comparable educational background.

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devonkim
For a similar chart (that is potentially even harder to read and visualize
somehow) this came out a couple years ago wrt people actually in certain
_occupations_ rather than for graduates in certain _disciplines_.
[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-
whom/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/)

------
dale14
Business majors have a lot of sexual relations and are more "distracted" by
what the (meat) market has to offer. Sad but true.

~~~
emodendroket
Alright but these people are all married

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chokma
One of the reasons may be better job prospects.

In Germany, for aspiring protestant pastors, you may share a position in a
parish as a couple (both getting paid 50-75% of a full position, with the
unspoken expectation of being available for 100%).

Also the protestant churches are extremely territorial (a vestige of the
medieval political landscape), so if you take your exam in Hamburg, you are
not necessarily welcome in Munich. But you could marry a bavarian spouse who
is also a pastor, which can be your entry ticket into the Evangelical Lutheran
Church of Bavaria...

edit: corrected name of ELCoB

also see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landeskirche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landeskirche)

------
Qw3r7
Never bring business home.

~~~
eismcc
Unless your business is theology?

~~~
lainga
For Christian theologists, at least, the "business" expects you to come to His
home instead...

~~~
gowld
He dwells in your home.

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awat
I wonder if it has anything to do with mutual feelings about pre-martial
abstinence.

------
pathsjs
Also, mathematicians! I don't have precise statistics, but anectodally when I
was in my (under)graduate years it seemed like every mathematician was dating
another one, unlike what I saw happen in other faculties

~~~
bradlys
Opposite of my experience. Seemed like every math major was single.

------
notadoc
The Bloomberg interactive guide is interesting.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-
whom/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/)

This statement is also interesting and I find it to be an accurate
representation of most relationships that I'm aware of:

> High-earning women (doctors, lawyers) tend to pair up with their economic
> equals, while middle- and lower-tier women often marry up. In other words,
> female CEOs tend to marry other CEOs; male CEOs are OK marrying their
> secretaries.

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djhaskin987
"Computer/Info Sci" was one of the few columns with mostly-red (fewer
marriages). I guess we don't get out that much ;)

~~~
Liquid_Fire
Mostly red does not mean fewer marriages, since the table only shows the
ratios for people who married.

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mfoy_
Would be nice if the charts were legible...

~~~
fasj82
[https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-...](https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-
major-matching.jpg)

[https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-...](https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-
matching-which-bas-marry-down.jpg)

~~~
mfoy_
Thanks! How did you get these? I tried opening the images in a new tab to see
if they had been artificially resized, but they had been compressed to all
hell.

~~~
fasj82
Remove the end of the url "?w=500"

I use the Imagus addon which does this kind of stuff automatically

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tc313
As a finance major, I don't really want my wife whispering "EBITDA" in my ear
late at night, so I can believe this conjecture even if the article isn't
convincing.

~~~
JadeNB
> As a finance major, I don't really want my wife whispering "EBITDA" in my
> ear late at night, so I can believe this conjecture even if the article
> isn't convincing.

This seems like an unfortunate argument, since, to the extent that it is
valid, it is surely also an argument against anyone marrying you who doesn't
long to hear financial jargon whispered in her ear at night.

------
xapata
Looks not too different from random. Low effect size, if anything.

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klochner
Business Majors don't, but MBAs do.

Business majors want to focus on their career, MBAs are mostly there and ready
to settle down.

------
bitL
Two predators together doesn't work, one has to work and yield.

