Over past couple years or so I’ve read different articles both online and on print about wealth marrying wealth along with how successful women don’t marry at all. Also to clarify by the use of the term wealth I’m not talking about millionaires per say but more so middle class Americans.
I know from my own experience as well that the people I know who are married typically are married to someone who is economically close to them or at least in the middleclass range. Also another phenomenon today is that many successful women don’t marry at all.
Personally I find it interesting how sociological changes in society have impacted income inequality. Curious about others thoughts on this?
Basically the gist of this article, from one perspective, is that college educated women don’t want to date men who didn’t go to college. I suppose college teaches that men who work trades are losers?
For some reason there’s an issue with the link. Here’s a quote from it:
“Well, yes it does. This is often known as “assortative mating”, which means people marry people like themselves. Numerous studies show it has risen in recent decades — and, as the economist Tyler Cowen says, these matches may be great for the individuals concerned, but they “propagate inequality across the generations”. They do so by concentrating wealth, often to an astonishing extent. “Rich plus rich equals super rich.””
Not only do people marry people like themselves, they hire people like themselves. For decades, mortgage bankers only gave home loans to people like themselves. Lack of access, historically, to home ownership in this country is often cited as a primary cause of income inequality.
Sure. It is poorly written. The subject is 23 years old and knows absolutely nothing, “college” is portrayed as the sole metric of intelligence and lack of same portrayed as ignorance and young women are portrayed as gold diggers. “Land a man”.
That guy is an idiot.
Younger people in general are waiting longer in general to marry and have children - very good thing. Does he at any point address the lack of maturity in the males of his peer group? No.
But IMHO access to college has had an unintended…and again IMHO unfortunate…knock on effect of causing many jobs that don’t need to have college degrees to require them.
So many people are getting locked out of many upwardly mobile jobs that they probably shouldn’t be locked out of.
Typically woman don’t downgrade when looking for a mate. They’ll try to find someone equal to or of higher status. I’m not trying to be a wise guy here, but when has it ever been different?
Okay. Well I never claimed it was the best article on this . Here’s another that focuses on Millennial women:
Here are some quotes from this article:
"For one, it’s not as if we are holding out for Jake Gyllenhaal, but we do have certain non-neg otiable expectations for potential mates that include college degrees and white-collar jobs. Life has always gone according to our plans, so why wouldn’t we land a man with these (reasonable) requirements?"
“In fact, as author Liza Mundy writes in her book, The Richer Sex , Millennial women are increasingly finding two options when it comes to romance: marry down or don’t marry.”
I forgot to respond to this in my previous post. It depends on how long. There is evidence that the reason for the surge in children with Autism is due to people having children at older ages. Another problem from my perspective is that it is more difficult physically and emotionally to raise a child at an older age.
Curious as to why you’d say it’s more emotionally difficult? The main source of stress for many families comes from finances. Having kids in my mid-late 30s has meant we have a ton of optionality for child care - either my wife or I could stay home, or we could do a nanny. Those options would not have been financially feasible 10 years ago, and I don’t think I’m unique here…
Physically, for sure though. I hurt all. the. time.
Maybe it’s not so much wanting to marry someone like oneself that’s the problem—those with similar socio-economic backgrounds, ideas about life and goals are more likely to connect—that’s the problem, but perhaps some looking for partners have expectations that are too high.
Knew a guy who was college educated and economically stable, a divorced, childless man who wanted to remain childless. Women turned him down for dates as someone balding & with a partial plate in his mouth.
Then they complain there aren’t any good men out there. He finally remarried a woman who had been a long time friend of his when they were both in unhealthy marriages.
Maybe the college educated have higher expectations for partners to the point it’s difficult to connect—for both men and women.
Men I’ve known with high school educations, for instance, usually weren’t ruling out overweight women as dates. Those who went through any college, OTOH, did a 180 & do quite a bit of ruling out.
Maybe some of this ruling out means later marriages. And in some instances, that may not be a bad thing. A character defect someone in their 20s may be naive about or willing to overlook, someone a decade older may have wised up & not be willing to live with certain aspects of a partner.
. Here’s another that focuses on Millennial women:
