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This is a really good comment, mostly because I dislike it's conclusion (viscerally) and yet it is well argued enough that I had to re-examine my own view.
This part in particular was a solid analogy:
And yet, even after consideration, I think it misses the mark on it's own terms.
Because it views marriage as an employer-employee relationship when it is perhaps better to consider it a co-equal partnership in a joint venture. After all, that 20 year contract w/non-compete applies to the other party just as strongly.
So what you're getting in exchange isn't just their future income, but it's a promise of stability in terms of your own employment. The idea is that by you taking over some portion of the duties that might otherwise fall to the other, you're enhancing their earning potential, and thus the share which you can expect to collect. Under truly ideal circumstances (not assumed, just making a point) it also gets your retirement plan squared away well in advance, as you will have decades of accumulated savings and someone to share it with at the end.
The way I view it, the economic case for marriage has always been based on the fact that you're intentionally splitting many costs and combining many expenses that would be larger if they were separate, so as to ease the burden on both parties. A marriage partner is a reliable 'roommate' who will (hopefully) never miss their rent payment. If you home cook meals regularly you're saving on eating takeout/delivery, you can get joint health insurance, you can share a vehicle, you can borrow the other person's belongings, their Netflix password, they are able to care for you if you're sick and otherwise complement your weaknesses. Basically it's incredibly valuable to have a life partner who pays a high cost for welching on any promises they make you. A guaranteed cooperative partner in the prisoner's dilemma to help you get to the better payoff.
And these benefits will compound over the course of the marriage assuming neither party goes off the deep end and does anything fiscally irresponsible. Which can absolutely happen!
But a consistent partnership over the course of decades can reap exponential benefits for the parties involved, which is the whole point.
Now, the point here:
Absolutely still stands. I just wanted to draw the analysis out a little further.
I appreciate the comment.
I agree a long term childcare contract is a very different thing from a loving marriage, which has a variety of financial, psychological, and spiritual benefits. But the cost splitting benefits you bring up don't require having children and sacrificing careers. Specializing in childcare and domestic labor to support someone else's career only confers stability and "retirement benefits" if you correctly identify someone with high earning potential & stability. That means delaying marriage until a similarly aged man is credentialed, or marrying an older man which many women are uncomfortable with.
But even if the benefits of marriage are larger than the contract analogy portrays I think the key point is that the change over time in the "opportunity cost" women pay up front is increasing and the benefits are constant (if not falling due to the Baumol making everything needed for children expensive and living single and traveling the world cheap).
I don't think I agree with this, ultimately. Or, at least, I think what has happened is that women have been able to acquire an outsized amount of financial support/security at nearly every level of society, so there is almost, almost ZERO chance that any given woman will be left destitute and homeless if she doesn't get married.
That is, women have almost zero downside risk exposure from being single. Putting it bluntly (without adopting the point) the risk of being left broke and without prospects was a MASSIVE incentive for women to achieve stability by finding a reliable provider. Stability with a partner, even if they're not necessarily wealthy, still beats out living on the streets.
That incentive has been removed, while their upside opportunities have also increased.
So I think that the benefits have increased in many ways. The synergistic effects of getting and staying married are probably stronger than before. But the "penalties" for being unmarried are no longer so severe.
Yeah, and it's easier to identify such person if you have
A) Good examples in your own life to use as reference, and
B) are willing and able to have your parents, who are also very invested in the decision, have some input.
So many people growing up in broken families are probably less able to identify those high-value mates, which likely exacerbates the issue.
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The issue is that there's no guarantee that the partnership will continue. Imagine a 23 year old woman who pairs with a similarly situated man and agrees with the traditional breakdown of labor. 10 years later, the man will be in a much more powerful position than her: if he reneges on the deal, he'll be better situated than she was and can take the large majority of the extra human capital that accrued due to the agreement to continue his job and find a new (younger, hotter, more in line with his ideal) partner. Alimony/child support/splitting of assets doesn't help the wife much there. And the woman will be older, have kids, and will have basically nuked her position in the job market; any future jobs or partners will be much worse than if she had not chosen to enter the initial agreement.
And that's a real risk. It's entirely rational for her to want to hedge her bets by building her career at the expense of fertility.
Most divorce courts will take account of the relative financial/wealth positions of the parties in parceling up assets and determining alimony. The goal is explicitly to keep the disadvantaged spouse at the standard of living they have become accustomed to.
But yes, the ability of the man to scurry off (maybe after the kids have left) with a new, younger lady is indeed a risk.
And that imposes a cost on younger single men as well by taking an otherwise eligible woman off the market for a time.
If we don't have strong social taboos on either adultery or men dating substantially younger, that would be a hard 'problem' to solve legislatively.
Personally, the way I'm looking at marriage now is something like "I am making an almost irrevocable 25-year commitment, I will accept heavy penalties for for breaching this commitment if you will do the same, and then at the 25 year mark, after the kids have been raised, we will discuss whether the partnership will continue." Perhaps both sides agree that some portion of the man's income should go into a trust which will be inaccessible to either party (except in dire emergencies) until the relationship hits the 25 year mark.
I honestly doubt that pure financial or emotional incentives suffice to replace the role that religion previously filled. It is a hard problem.
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