Why Men Pay To Stay MarriedAnd women pay to get divorced.
By Steven E. LandsburgPosted Friday, Dec. 1, 2000, at 8:30 PM ET
In the year following a divorce, women's living standards fall by 27 percent while men's living standards rise by 10 percent. So says a widely quoted study by the Social Science Research Council. Feminist groups have leapt to the conclusion that divorce laws are unfair to women. When I first saw the numbers, I leapt to a different conclusion: Marriage is unfair to men. After all, a man who stays married is forced to sacrifice 10 percent of what he could achieve on his own.
On reflection, I think both I and the feminists ought to have looked at a little economics before we leapt. Both they and I had forgotten that prices indicate value. If men stay in marriages that cost them a lot of money, that just proves they really like being married. They're getting something they value, and they're paying for it. Nothing unfair about that.
Related in Slate
Read
this 1997 "Dialogue" between Katha Pollitt and David Blankenhorn on how hard it should be to get a divorce, or
this recent "Book Club" between Pollitt and A.O. Scott about whether staying in a bad marriage is better for the kids. Steven E. Landsburg
wrote another "Everyday Economics" about divorce in 1997, analyzing no-fault, mutual consent, and covenant marriage contracts.
Related on the Web
This dissertation abstract from a Swedish university finds that working wives do not destabilize marriages, and
this paper from a University of North Texas journal highlights how women suffer financially from divorce. For a less scholarly view,
read this cynical advice column for men, which says, "If your wife has ever mentioned the word divorce you had better get yourself prepared."
This article claims that more divorce filers are in fact women.
One could make a similar argument about women: A woman who takes a big financial hit to get divorced must really hate being married, so the conclusion is that marriage makes women unhappy. That argument is weak because not all divorces are voluntary on the woman's part. But here's a much stronger argument: Married men, in effect, pay their wives to stick around (by acquiescing to a lifestyle where the wife gets to consume more than she could earn on her own). Why would you pay a woman to stay married unless you were pretty sure she considered marriage unpleasant?
Take an example. Mrs. Smith, if divorced, could spend, say, $20,000 a year. Mr. Smith agrees to let her spend $25,000 a year, even though he himself is living below the standard he could achieve on his own. Why would he agree to that? It's got to be because a) he likes having Mrs. Smith around; and b) he believes Mrs. Smith would leave him without the $5,000 premium. So what the statistics tell us is not that divorce is unfair to women and not that marriage is unfair to men, but that men enjoy being married and women don't.
Of course there are myriad exceptions to those rules, just as there are myriad exceptions to the rule that a newly divorced woman's living standard goes down by 27 percent. That figure is a broad average, and the conclusions to be drawn from such figures should be interpreted in a similar spirit. The moral is not that every man prefers marriage and every woman prefers divorce, but that by some appropriate measure, marriage is on average good for men and bad for women. That's why men pay to stay married and women pay to get divorced.
Moreover, there's a good reason, rooted in both economics and biology, why we should have expected this conclusion all along. A 30-year-old woman who wants a family is getting close to the point where she has to choose the best of her available suitors. A 30-year-old man can always choose to wait another five or 10 years till someone better comes along. In general, the longer you spend searching for something—be it a car, a house, or a life partner—the happier you're going to be with the one you end up with. So—again, with myriad exceptions—a woman's optimal strategy is to settle for an imperfect mate and then try to change him. A man's optimal strategy is to search until he finds someone close to perfect. It's therefore no surprise that women, more often than men, should end up regretting their choices.
In hindsight, it all makes sense. Once you realize there's a biological clock, you should be able to predict that men (having searched long and hard for the perfect partner) would make financial sacrifices to preserve their marriages, and that women who stay married to imperfect partners would be kept in their marriages by financial rewards—or, to say the same thing another way, that women who leave their marriages would make financial sacrifices. (And you should also be able to make a lot of auxiliary predictions, such as this one: Wives try harder to mold their husbands than husbands try to mold their wives—because husbands wait until they've found wives who need relatively little molding.) Fairness never had anything to do with it.
Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: One reader said "You're trying to make people think with this article, but looking at The Fray suggests it isn't working…" But they were thinking in The Fray, just--well they gave the impression that they weren't thinking anything they hadn't thought before, they weren't changing their minds. There were many categories of replies--in fact, there has never been a Fray in which it was so easy to sum up posts in a line or two…]
1) What about children/child support costs? Men's point of view from Barry Ross, women's from Kate here.
2) What about basic male/female income inequity? Raised by Sarah, here.
3) What about Sex? (You knew it was coming) Dilan Esper posed this version, but it featured a lot. Subset from Markus: "Men have more than twice as many sexual partners as women. Surely that means men have twice as much chance of finding their perfect mate. Isn't it true that women fall in love with just about every man that they sleep with?!"
Even more attractive subset from Smackmonkey: "This entire issue is simply a matter of cash for sex. Men are under the hormonal delusion that marrying a woman will mean more consistent sex, and are willing to put up with the boredom and triteness of marriage to get it, despite the fact that the quality substantially decreases after the first year of marriage."
4) "I don't need a woman to take care of me." Mani thinks modern women aren't very good at it anyway, but he also thinks that's quite a good thing.
5) Men pay to stay married because they will get destroyed in a divorce. Joel Dubow's claim included this: "Men are 10% better off? Perhaps 10% better than they would be if they were incarcerated in prison."
6) Jeremy says "Marriage will not make you happy. Only you can make yourself happy" in a charming post full of worthwhile (but not economics-related) relationship advice. Many others were outraged at the idea that economics came into marriage at all.
7) Men pay women for the domestic labor (cooking, cleaning, childrearing) and at a 10% standard of living premium that is still a bargain: PC's view, here.
8) We're still not sure which way Kenny meant this: "my stay-at-home wife earns twice what I give her, which is pretty much my whole check".
9) Gallant defense of women (from Keith) which it is possible some women would prefer to do without: "Girls are born angels. If you have to hate someone for those who have become evil women, hate those evil male buddies you had in high school or in college."
10) Want to hear about my divorce/marriage/financial situation? Justin will tell you here (we think "do all women have it that tough?" was irony) and Dash Riprock (is that your real name?) here. Or get details of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones's lives "She had originally asked for closer to $5 million for every year of marriage, but felt that holding out would get in the way of romance."
11) Let's put this politely: There were women respondents who didn't like Stephen Landsburg's attitudes.
12) "I am fairly certain that this article was written to demonstrate the danger of relying too heavily on statistics to develop an argument." Amos, here.
13) "One fact, many speculations. This was an entertaining, playful article to be read in that spirit." Thank you Tara.
[and finally, one post in full:]
A wonderful topic for generating passionate discussion. However, the author is trying too hard. The reason men are worth more divorced (or single) and women worth more married has much more to do with disparities between the income of the average male and female than it does with any kind of differential in marital satisfaction. This is particularly true of married couples who tend to divide earning and homemaking duties traditionally--the male bears the responsibility for earning and the female, while she may have a job, typically earns less and compensates by doing most of the domestic duties. When they get divorced, the average ex-husband keeps what he was "paying" for the domestic services, while the average ex-wife sees a reduction of her income because she has, in a way, lost employment. In most cases, if men are paying for the privilege of being married, it is not particularly mysterious as to what benefits they are paying for. For some women, providing those marital "benefits" to their husbands (chores, child-rearing and "wifely duties") are by far their most marketable skills--particularly as the years go by. This arrangement is by mutual agreement and is beneficial to both--until something happens and divorce becomes necessary. At that point, a generous divorce settlement for the wife is a bit like a "golden parachute" to sustain her until she can re-establish herself financially (probably by getting remarried). Is that unfair? I don't think so.
--Dean
(To reply, click here.)
(12/4)
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: One reader said "You're trying to make people think with this article, but looking at The Fray suggests it isn't working…" But they were thinking in The Fray, just--well they gave the impression that they weren't thinking anything they hadn't thought before, they weren't changing their minds. There were many categories of replies--in fact, there has never been a Fray in which it was so easy to sum up posts in a line or two…]
1) What about children/child support costs? Men's point of view from Barry Ross, women's from Kate here.
2) What about basic male/female income inequity? Raised by Sarah, here.
3) What about Sex? (You knew it was coming) Dilan Esper posed this version, but it featured a lot. Subset from Markus: "Men have more than twice as many sexual partners as women. Surely that means men have twice as much chance of finding their perfect mate. Isn't it true that women fall in love with just about every man that they sleep with?!"
Even more attractive subset from Smackmonkey: "This entire issue is simply a matter of cash for sex. Men are under the hormonal delusion that marrying a woman will mean more consistent sex, and are willing to put up with the boredom and triteness of marriage to get it, despite the fact that the quality substantially decreases after the first year of marriage."
4) "I don't need a woman to take care of me." Mani thinks modern women aren't very good at it anyway, but he also thinks that's quite a good thing.
5) Men pay to stay married because they will get destroyed in a divorce. Joel Dubow's claim included this: "Men are 10% better off? Perhaps 10% better than they would be if they were incarcerated in prison."
6) Jeremy says "Marriage will not make you happy. Only you can make yourself happy" in a charming post full of worthwhile (but not economics-related) relationship advice. Many others were outraged at the idea that economics came into marriage at all.
7) Men pay women for the domestic labor (cooking, cleaning, childrearing) and at a 10% standard of living premium that is still a bargain: PC's view, here.
8) We're still not sure which way Kenny meant this: "my stay-at-home wife earns twice what I give her, which is pretty much my whole check".
9) Gallant defense of women (from Keith) which it is possible some women would prefer to do without: "Girls are born angels. If you have to hate someone for those who have become evil women, hate those evil male buddies you had in high school or in college."
10) Want to hear about my divorce/marriage/financial situation? Justin will tell you here (we think "do all women have it that tough?" was irony) and Dash Riprock (is that your real name?) here. Or get details of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones's lives "She had originally asked for closer to $5 million for every year of marriage, but felt that holding out would get in the way of romance."
11) Let's put this politely: There were women respondents who didn't like Stephen Landsburg's attitudes.
12) "I am fairly certain that this article was written to demonstrate the danger of relying too heavily on statistics to develop an argument." Amos, here.
13) "One fact, many speculations. This was an entertaining, playful article to be read in that spirit." Thank you Tara.
[and finally, one post in full:]
A wonderful topic for generating passionate discussion. However, the author is trying too hard. The reason men are worth more divorced (or single) and women worth more married has much more to do with disparities between the income of the average male and female than it does with any kind of differential in marital satisfaction. This is particularly true of married couples who tend to divide earning and homemaking duties traditionally--the male bears the responsibility for earning and the female, while she may have a job, typically earns less and compensates by doing most of the domestic duties. When they get divorced, the average ex-husband keeps what he was "paying" for the domestic services, while the average ex-wife sees a reduction of her income because she has, in a way, lost employment. In most cases, if men are paying for the privilege of being married, it is not particularly mysterious as to what benefits they are paying for. For some women, providing those marital "benefits" to their husbands (chores, child-rearing and "wifely duties") are by far their most marketable skills--particularly as the years go by. This arrangement is by mutual agreement and is beneficial to both--until something happens and divorce becomes necessary. At that point, a generous divorce settlement for the wife is a bit like a "golden parachute" to sustain her until she can re-establish herself financially (probably by getting remarried). Is that unfair? I don't think so.
--Dean
(To reply, click here.)
(12/4)