
The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality - Futurebot
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/upshot/marriages-of-power-couples-reinforce-income-inequality.html
======
omonra
My two thoughts on this:

1\. I bet a large portion of this phenomenon is related to the current US
divorce laws (basically a woman with a child can divorce a high-income husband
and claim a large portion of his income for child support / maintenance).

Therefore marrying people of your 'social circle' is a certain way to mitigate
this effect (ie if your spouse is a high-level attorney rather than a
secretary, you have a much lower risk of it happening to you).

2\. Author kinda assumes the reader is an idiot in some places. For example:
"As it becomes harder for many people to “marry up”.

Well, no. "People" never really married up. Women with looks had a chance to
marry men of higher social standing. The reverse (man marrying a woman of
higher social standing) was very much an exception.

So basically what this means is that men of today are not as interested in
marrying women beneath their social status as they were in the past.

I guess that women's liberation had a lot to do with this phenomenon. If one
is an intelligent woman, she can simply go to a good school and get a career -
instead of her only choice in life being marriage to a rich man. So that
actually sounds like a not terrible thing for such women.

~~~
meric
_The reverse (man marrying a woman of higher social standing) was very much an
exception._

I'd argue against that. There's precedence in older wealthy women marrying
younger man of lower social standing.

Queen Victoria of the British Empire marrying Prince Albert is one example of
a woman marrying a man of lower social standing (though they are of the same
age).

 _in Albert 's own words, "I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty
in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not
the master in the house."_

It may be uncomfortable for the man in question, but it has happened.

~~~
omonra
Thank you for the quote - but I think you picked a rather peculiar example.

Queen Victoria simply could not marry ANYBODY in the world of equal social
standing - because by English law, whoever married the Queen would still only
be a Prince of Wales.

I think the only real example you can draw on would be aristocratic families
who lost their fortune and had to marry off their offspring to a child of rich
bourgeois. This way the two family combined pedigree and wealth - but they
sort of came on equal footing due to the varying assets each brought to the
table.

------
dogma1138
Some of the comments in this thread make me think if people actually date
anymore.

People interact with other people that are close to them at any given time,
childhood, college, career.

Marrying your sweetheart became rarer since people stopped marrying at the age
of 18 in general. Marrying your college GF became more rare because people are
now marrying in their late 20's to mid 30's rather than early 20's. When
people move on with their life they usually replace their previous social
circles with new ones.

So if you are a banker your social circle will be made mostly from your new
coworkers and maybe maybe 1 or 2 childhood/college friends if they happen to
still live near by. So you are much more likely to marry another banker,
lawyer, trader and the likes simply because those are the people you interact
with on your day to day, and those are the people you'll be more likely to see
after work at less than official capacity.

It's not like people actively look for spouses who make as much as they do, is
that they more likely to meet a spouse from the same social economic circle.
Life isn't some feel good romcom, yes sometimes some one might fall in love
with a maid, a waiter, or meet their soul mate in the park when their dogs
decides to run through the sprinklers who just happens to be a teacher but the
likelihood of that happening by chance is about the same as a romcom winning
the Oscars.

I won't claim that some people don't do some due diligence and plan
engagements with every potential mate to the point where they cover financial
compatibility but I would dare to say this is rare. Other arrangements such as
prenups are also much more likely to happen in such cases where there is
financial inequality to begin with or when one of the partners has hereditary
assets which they would like to protect.

P.S. It's a bit odd that not subsidizing some one these days will count as
income inequality, also it's important to point out that financial inequality
between partners leads to infidelity and divorce. Partners who make less money
than their other partner are much more likely to cheat, especially if they
become a full time or part time stay at home parent. Marriages in which one of
the partners makes significantly more than the other also are 3 times more
likely to end up in divorce.

~~~
dikdik
Exactly my thoughts. Assortative mating has been happening all along, equality
between the sexes is the only thing that has changed here.

Back then even if you didn't get married young, most men did not have options
to marry a female doctor, banker, lawyer, etc. You would meet a nice secretary
at work and probably use similar criteria to today (pretty, compatible
personality wise, smart). In 2015 that smart secretary is a smart doctor, none
of this is surprising.

~~~
rdlecler1
It's been happening be geographic relocation and tools like online dating
profiles make it easier. Most of my single Ivy friends filter on Ivy +
Advanced Degree.

Previously might have try to pick the best from a pool of 20, now you can
increase the pool by a couple orders of magnitude. That will have a
qualitative effect.

~~~
dogma1138
I actually wonder how many people use online dating sites, and even then this
is quite natural. You are most likely to find a compatible partner from a
group of people similar to you, having a partner with a similar level of
intelligence, interests, and world views is quite important as marriage is no
longer seen as some right of passage and a baby factory.

Yes if you use some specific dating site for ivy league alumni you are
lowering your selection pool but it's not that different from that service
that matches 11 out of 10 on the hotness scale super models with rich men.

If you use a normal dating site the overall selection you'll get will be quite
more substantial than 20 even if you filter the heck out of it I'll assume,
but still It will most likely not match a maid with a banker. But there is
nothing that stops it from matching a school teacher, a doctor that spent his
or her life volunteering in Africa instead of getting rich in an LA private
practice or a summa cum laude lawyer that decided to become a public defender
instead of getting the likes of BP out of trouble.

Rich people tend to marry other rich people, attractive people tend to marry
other attractive people, people in general tend to marry people who resemble
them. Should we also run a piece about how attractive successful men marrying
attractive successful women is now considered sexist?

------
cheez
More on this phenomenon in "Coming Apart: The State of White America".

My 2c: A guy or gal making $350K is not commended for reducing income
inequality by marrying someone making $60K. Indeed, if things fall apart, the
"equity courts" will divide the earnings spouse nicely between them. While I
can understand you don't want someone on the street, these things just
penalize people for being successful. So it is not a surprise that people are
practicing self-preservation and selecting those spouses who have nothing to
gain from a separation (besides their freedom.) Additionally, as alluded to in
the book above, people who have university degrees have only a 20% chance of
divorce and usually, higher income earners have said university degrees.

~~~
alistairSH
Wow, that's seriously jaded stuff... Selecting mates based on lowering the
cost of eventual divorce!

I'd bet it has more to do with maintaining current (or expected) lifestyle. If
you're used to a top-5% income, with the lifestyle that income enables,
marrying "down" has a real impact. The effect would be even more noticeable in
an expensive metropolitan area like NorCal, NYC, etc.

~~~
superuser2
An event with >10% probability that will cut your quality of life by at least
half forever, and guarantee that extended unemployment carries a prison
sentence, is a pretty big deal.

We generally carry home/car/life/health insurance to manage risks that are
drastically lower probability and consequence, yet no one calls that jaded.

------
rayiner
> These days, an investment banker may marry another investment banker rather
> than a high school sweetheart, or a lawyer will marry another lawyer, or a
> prestigious client, rather than a secretary.

I'm all for reducing income inequality, but I find the complaints about
assortive marriage to be, frankly, sexist. Sandra Day O'Connor graduated third
in her class at Stanford Law, and was only offered jobs as a legal secretary
in private law firms. Back then, a lot of smart, ambitious women were
relegated to jobs that didn't maximize their intellectual potential because of
sexism in the workplace. Now that sexism is subsiding, and women are free to
pursue traditionally male jobs, of course you're seeing more couples marrying
within their educational and economic class.

~~~
rdlecler1
True, one might also argue that our education system greatly suffered as it
lost many of the best and brightest teachers (This comment is intended as an
observation, not a value judgement).

------
crdoconnor
This is another in a long series of misdirections about income inequality by
Tyler Cowen.

More details:

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort-
by-t...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort-by-tyler-
cowen-and-megan-mcardle-to-silence-discussion-about-income-inequality.html)

>Of all the causes behind growing income inequality, in the longer run this
development may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest
to counter.

Well, that's pretty much why you chose to invent this little story, isn't it
Tyler?

In unrelated news, robots are totally going to steal your job, which may prove
one of the most significant and also one of the hardest causes of income
inequality to counter:

[https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the-
us...](https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the-us-middle-
class-a-qa-with-tyler-cowen-author-of-average-is-over/)

~~~
Futurebot
You might be right about an attempt at misdirection (I wouldn't speculate one
way or another, but obviously EPI agrees with you), but I don't think that
invalidates the case about income inequality being partially (among many other
sources) caused by AM. It seems fairly well-supported by the evidence from
NBER, which Cowen wasn't involved in: [http://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21595972-how-sex...](http://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21595972-how-sexual-equality-increases-gap-between-rich-and-poor-
households-sex-brains-and)

The (also liberal) Brookings institution also seems to support it, so I don't
think the opposition case is exactly ironclad:
[http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-
memos/posts/2...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-
memos/posts/2014/02/10-opposites-dont-attract-assortative-mating-reeves)

Another thing to consider is that income inequality is increasing via second-
order AM effects, via propagation across generations, rather than directly due
to the marriages
([http://www.economist.com/node/21640316](http://www.economist.com/node/21640316))

------
paulddraper
This article is missing important info:

(1) This is much less interesting if the effect doesn't propogate, i.e. if
income levels only lasts one generation. This is a _crucial_ part of eugenics
-- which the articles compares the effect to -- and yet nothing in the article
suggests that income transfers generations. (I'm not saying it does or
doesn't; just that the article doesn't address this at all.)

(2) The same is probably true for good looks, culture, athletic ability,
hobbies, education, geography, race, IQ, and wealth. I suspect there are a
number of confounding variables. Omitting any mention of them doesn't
invalidate the reported results, but does make misinterpreting the results of
the article much easier.

~~~
devdas
The benefits of high income levels tend to compound across generations.

~~~
paulddraper
Can you cite a source? I'm not saying you or the article are wrong, just that
there are some big gaps.

~~~
Futurebot
Try
[http://www.economist.com/node/21640316](http://www.economist.com/node/21640316)

~~~
paulddraper
Unless I am reading the article wrong, that says that children of high income
earners do better on the SAT, and that high income parents spend a lot on
education.

I don't see anything about the correlation between parent income and child
income.

~~~
Futurebot
High earning parents are able to pay for prep schools, tutoring, materials.
Those children get into elite schools. Those graduates of elites schools go on
to elite, well-paid jobs.

"On graduation, many members of America’s future elite will head for the law
firms, banks and consultancies where starting salaries are highest."

Here are some more explicit articles on the phenomenon:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-
peo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-people-raise-
kids-family-wealth/399809/)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-
pare...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-parents-
create-glass-floor-to-ensure-children-succeed-regardless-of-talent.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-
and-p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-poor-
ones-are-raised-very-differently.html?_r=0)

If you'd like to read a study on it ("Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants
of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth"), you can do so here:

[http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf)

Here's another from Pew:

[http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs-
repo...](http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs-
report_artfinal.pdf?la=en)

If you want more information, google "social mobility united states",
"intergenerational mobility united states", and read "Twilight of the Elites"
and "The Son also Rises."

~~~
paulddraper
The problem with that bit from the Economist is that it no data were presented
to back it up. When it comes to these topics, there's pretty sloppy journalism
all around, including the original NY Times article.

The Atlantic article just quotes the IZA article, which is about wealth
transfer in Sweden, not income. Wealth is heavily affected by spending habits;
income less so. And t Telegraph and NY Times articles don't offer anything
concrete on the subject.

The Pew source _does_ address the subject. The key part is:

> Approximately half of parental income advantages are passed on to children.
> The IGE [intergenerational elasticity], when averaged across all levels of
> parental income, is estimated at 0.52 for men and 0.47 for women.

(That means that if someone earns $40k above average, their children can be
expected to earn $20k above average.)

In comparison, IGE in UK is 0.5, France is 0.41, and Denmark is 0.15.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Intergen...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Intergenerational_mobility_graph-1.jpg)

IGE studies are somewhat scarce, but that's no excuse for the original NY
Times making a bunch of unsubstantiated implications.

------
jackcosgrove
If you marry someone who is dissimilar to you in curiosity, interests,
aspirations, and experiences (i.e. not someone in a similar place in society
to you), then what the heck are you supposed to talk about for forty to sixty
years?

~~~
fulafel
That sounds like enough time to get bored of talking shop with the same person
outside of work.

------
rdlecler1
In Evolutionary theory, Population Generics typically assumes random mating.
But because of both assortative mating AND a secular trend toward geographical
re-distribution across political, social, and economic factors (bankers in NY,
techies in SF, etc) you have the potential makings of speciation: Homo Fund
Manager, Homo Engineer? And which proto-species who would the first Mars
colonists likely come from? Will a long family of engineers shun a potential
husband because he stems from a long family of bankers?

------
nateabele
Oh look! Journalists have opinions on other people's lives.

~~~
jclulow
Are they not allowed to? The Upshot seems more like a column than regular news
journalism, and they do cite studies and information from other people.

