
More Men Marrying Wealthier Women - fiaz
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19marriage.html
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yardie
To take it to its logical conclusion: Wealthy men are putting off marriage
because of the current divorce laws or are marrying women who are equal or
wealthier than them. Wealthy women don't face such problems. Ex husbands
generally don't file alimony.

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tjic
This all boils down to one things: in a knowledge economy, women can earn more
than they can in a brute-force-and-muscle economy.

There are two bell curves: income of men, and income of women. At one point,
the men's income bellcurve was way to the right of the women's: it was a rare
woman who earned more than ANY man. Thus, marriages of lower earning men to
higher earning women were very rare.

Now, the women's bellcurve has moved to the right, so that it 85% overlaps
men's.

There are a lot more possible pairings of men and women where the woman earns
more.

This NYT article isn't really news - it's the inevitable outcome of the
industrial and information revolutions.

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lmkg
Is the trend really "More men marrying wealthier women," or is it simply "More
women are wealthy?" A skim of the article would seem to imply the latter at
least as much as the former, possibly more.

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lionhearted
> “We’ve known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the
> standpoint of physical and mental well-being,” said Stephanie Coontz, a
> professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and research
> director for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy
> group.

My first thought was that's a pretty huge [citation needed], but then I
checked out the CCF website.

<http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/>

Actually, the rotating graphic they had that said "CCF is dedicated to..."
struck me as interesting and compelling, it's worth watching for a few seconds
if you have the time. It's a mix of very traditional family scenes and very
modern scenes in the same graphic. Interestingly composed and put together, I
feel a little more informed just having looked at it for a bit.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The idea that men "need" marriage more than women is sketchy, IMO.

My suspicion: whoever came up with that conclusion picked a few metrics which
women value more than men (e.g., house cleanliness, frequency of doctor
visits). They determined that men score higher on these metrics when they are
married and concluded men need marriage more.

Considering how many men are avoiding marriage these days, and how much effort
women spend on trying to get men to marry them, I suspect that this conclusion
is false.

~~~
bayleo
The usual argument is evolutionary; i.e. men have a biological incentive to
embrace monogamy to help prevent the chances of being cuckolded while women do
not. I'm not supporting it, as it is an equally untestable hypothesis, just
mentioning it for the sake of the discussion.

~~~
mattm
Strictly in terms of different cultures, more cultures have polygamy than
strict monogamy. If the advantage was evolutionary, you would not find so many
cultures that have a degree on polygamy.

Polyandry on the other hand, is extremely rare which makes complete sense when
factoring in the effort required for a woman to raise her children.

[http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoA...](http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoAtlas.pdf)

    
    
      # of cultures - Maritial Composition:
      36 - Missing Data
      186 - Independent nuclear, monogamous
      453 - Independent nuclear, occasional polygyny
      69 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in same dwelling
      18 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in separate dwellings
      344 - Non-sororal, cowives in separate dwellings
      157 - Non-sororal, cowives in same dwelling
      4 - Independent polyandrous families

~~~
Steve_Baker
I don't think it follows that polyandry is less advantageous for a woman than
polygamy -- more men equals more resources. I think the reason is that most
societies are patriarchal rather than matriarchal and this has traditionally
led to men being the greater holder of wealth, and the disparity between the
rich and poor being what it is, 1/100th of a rich man is worth more than even
100 poor men. That still doesn't mean that a woman wouldn't choose to have 100
men if she cannot have a portion of a rich man, but in a patriarchal society,
those women would likely become prostitutes -- the (to men perhaps) more
socially acceptable form of polyandry? This might even be preferable to the
woman, since I could see multiple men in the same household potentially being
much more rife with conflict. I wouldn't be surprised if societies tend to try
to suppress polygamy at equal or even greater rates than they do prostition.

Basically I don't think polyandry is rare at all, it's just in the form of
uncounted prostitution. I'd lay odds that you'd see more (monogamous)
polyandry in societies that are more (very) matriarchal and/or the
distribution of wealth is flat, both being rather uncommon.

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jacquesm
Did I land on 'Cosmo' by accident ?

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kingkawn
Now to tap into this trend successfully...

