Of course I am going to come out and say the obvious: Not every woman is after a man for his money, and not every man is looking to make the big bucks to impress a woman.
Now that’s over and done with, what if a guy’s job had no effect on his value in the marriage market?
How would that affect a young man’s career choices?
Credit
This paper examines the extent to which human capital and career decisions are affected by their potential returns in the marriage market.
Although schooling and career decisions often are made before getting married, these decisions are likely to affect the future chances of receiving a marriage offer, the type of offer, and the probability of getting divorced.
Therefore, I estimate a forward‐looking model of the marriage and career decisions of young men between the ages of 16 and 39.
The results show that if there were no returns to career choices in the marriage market, men would tend to work less, study less, and choose blue‐collar jobs over white‐collar jobs.
These findings suggest that the existing literature underestimates the true returns to human capital investments by ignoring their returns in the marriage market.
Source: “Marriage and Career: The Dynamic Decisions of Young Men” from “Journal of Human Capital”
Interesting stuff, don’t you think?
It makes you wonder why men in particular choose the jobs they do, and the positions they take.
It might be a biological thing too — that men want to make more money than women so they can take care of them and their family, or just out of sheer desire.
It also brings up another question: What about women who go into high-paying positions and take on big salaries? What’s their motivation in regards to the marriage market?
I’d suggest that based on the above, women who don’t make a high salary are more likely to find someone than women who do, for a number of reasons:
- Harder to find someone in your social circle
- Men want to make more money than women
- They may be pickier (?) because of their own status
- Men might be intimidated by such independence
What do you think?
Do you think the findings above are true — that men would work less, study less and take more blue collar jobs if they didn’t need to think about marriage?
Would the marriage market make a difference in what women choose to do? If so, why?
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
ooops
About this commentator. Hi all… I just wanted to give my two cents. Let me start off by saying I am 31 and that I make less than 18,000 dollars a year but I am the richest man on Earth. I would certainly love to make more than that but it is not necessary. As someone who uses his hands as in my profession of luthier (musical instrument maker), I don’t mind getting them dirty, which means that if I have to do manual labour like change the starter, the radiator or brakes on my car -I can do that, perhaps having spent 1/10th the cost than to bring the car in to “get it looked at”. I do the “looking” and the labour. I do things like repair my own plumbing, taking the dryer apart, diagnosing it and repairing the problem. With what I know in electronics I have been able to repair all sorts of electronics, from radios to computer components, The computer I am using now has had three capacitors replaced on the video card. I do get some funds from the Web pages that I create as well as the 3D models and 3D video sequences that I render and part of the programs that I have written. And even though I am a nerdy programmer, I still don’t mind maintaining my Light Sport Aircraft that I constructed myself (FAA certified). The truest form of happiness is through flight! Since I work with wood, I make my own furniture (from old cabinetry to modernist), I even build my own tools (a motor, some carefully cut wood and a blade and there you go, you do have to know what you’re doing though).
So you see I myself could care less about how much I make -in fact a lot less than most of the women I’ve met. It seems that its the foremost thing on their minds -how much someone makes. Most men do seek wealth (and yes, start wars for wealth) to impress women, but for someone who, like me, would be considered poor by someone grossing $65,000/year -then my prospects on the “marriage market” are bleak.
blue collar jobs? Lately there's been a lot of talk about white collar workers saying they'd work blue-collar jobs if they could, well guess what they can, but most won't because to many people its a fantasy, if they really wanted to work in them they could, after all many blue-collar jobs plumbing, electrician,etc. can make as much as a white collar worker but they won't switch because many people like their cushy office jobs.
Anyway, as far as guys go I don't really care for CEO types, they usually tend to be workaholics and cheat, women like to throw themselves at high powered guys. My bf is a programmer, we really have a great relationship, to my bf work isn't life itself. Its only a part of his life. I'm currently going for my accounting degree but I intend on finishing and working in either accounting or some other field.
Its kind of sad that girls still go for their MRS degrees, I don't want to judge but I couldn't ever put my future into someone else's hands, lots of people divorce and the women then have to go back out into the workforce after many years off and sometimes aren't taken seriously, or back to college in their 40s. Even if he's the most wonderful husband in the entire world, sometimes good marriages come to an end and even the best husbands want to move on with a divorce.
You can' t just switch and take many desirable blue-collar jobs–there's a lot of skill and training involved. Training to be an electrician means years of apprenticeship, tech school, etc.. Same thing with carpentry, apprenticeships are 4 years long and you usually have to have some sort of related experience or tech school. Also, many blue-collar jobs are hard to get in America right now–for example, the auto industry has been slammed by the recession, and it's difficult to come by an auto industry job.
Yes that's true, there's a lot of training, often years in apprenticeships for the trades.
I think that a person's career choice is driven by their internal values. For example, my husband put himself through school to acquire a quite lucritive job but it wasn't for the need to impress a woman. It is because he values a challenge and likes to be stimulated. He also likes to work hard and help people. I think that even if he remained single, he would have made the same choice. I think it depends on the person.
Good point. Personality has a big thing to do with it.
What about the lesbians? Have any studies been done on us? There's a term "power lesbian" and I think power lesbians tend to choose other "power lesbians"…I have no real straight-world experience with this, so I don't have feedback on this article. I just wonder about my fellow Sapphic sisters and how (if) income plays a role in our dating/mating lives.
I don\’t know! I will have to definitely keep an eye out for articles on that. I wonder if a power lesbian would react in the same way.
I not only think that most of the findings are true(with exceptions of course), but men such as myself would be doing things to actually help the world and make it a better place for human and non-human animals, since these activities don't make much money. Some of us guys would be doing things we actually like, such as enjoying life and relaxing. Money should not exist at all.
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Being middle aged and married for nearly 25 years, I'd say based on my own life, that the findings of the paper that was quoted here are flawed, severely. I made my choices based on what I felt was right for me. The thought of how those choices might affect my marriage prospects never entered my mind. As it turns out, those choices led to meeting and marrying my wife. That outcome was not even considered when I made those choices though.
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I can only speak for myself, obviously, but I basically picked my career when I was in the 6th grade. I knew at that point that I wanted to be an engineer. At the age of twelve my brain was much more interested in Transformers, Legos, and toy guns than girls. I chose my career based because I wanted something that challenged me intellectually (yes, I actually did have that thought process at the age of twelve).____My career does pay extremely well, but if I was chosing my career based on my ability to attract women, I'd hardly chose a profession who's stereotype is of geeks with broken glasses and pocket protectors. 🙂
My comment will be quite biased as I am a college girl aspiring to take one of those challenging, high-income jobs.
I never thought of marriage when I made my career choice. I chose it because it was interesting and because I think that just being a wife and mother is too boring for my taste.
Two very important people in my life have two opposing viewpoints. My mother, whom I choose to disagree with, says that when the economy is good, women with high-paying jobs will not find be able to find a husband because men don't like women with high paying jobs. I'm pretty sure that she believes that careers are less important for women than for men. My boyfriend, on the other hand, says that he couldn't be with someone who didn't do a highly intellectual jobs. The jobs that he mentions are generally all very high pay. I think our society is just transitioning, and this attitude might change.
My question now is, what pool of men did they choose from? What economic status and upbringing? What kind of jobs were these men holding at the time, and how much money were these men aged 16-39 making?
For me, I'm not overly concerned with what I'm doing for a living. Happiness for me is the most important, as well as having a low stress level. I've had stressful jobs in the past, and I wasn't happy doing them. So I stopped. Screw impressing anybody.
I work a lot on passive income and building assets partially because of what you talk about here. The whole point of building wealth is to take care of myself and my future family. I'm doing pretty much what every guy with a high paying job does- except I'm doing it as quietly as possible.
Of course, this will all be moot once I marry Taylor Swift.
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I went through longer schooling to get into a field that pays a little more than the average full time job. I am a woman. I chose this profession because I like the intellectual rigour and the skillsets involved, and of course for the potential increase in earning power FOR MYSELF, not to attract a husband. I just assumed that it's the same for most of my peers as it is a pretty competitive route, and students who get in have to put several years of their lives on hold and rack up a significant level of debt – why would you go through this just to find a mate?
some of my male friends from the same program have basically admited that their MAIN goal for this program is to get women. It's always weird how simplistic some guys think about this – "women like money and power, i like women, therefore I'm going to work hard to get money and power, ultimately to get women". it almost sounds like primate talk. I guess some of us aren't so evolved after all 🙂
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I think woman in higher-paying/high power jobs would probably be less likely to get married simply because they won't have the time to invest in the relationship. Very rarely does a guy single-handedly keep a relationship afloat, and as much as we'd like to think it takes two, there's always one person carrying the emotional burden for both. Such a woman wouldn't have time for dates or even quality time which would most definitely hinder their chances at getting married.
Wasn't there book that came out somewhat recently about how men don't work with their hands anymore and how much more satisfying those types of jobs are? There is something so awesome about looking back at the end of the day and having a real, tangible thing that you can say that you've made.
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A corollary to this: As a highly educated women, working in a traditionally male-dominated field, I find a lot of men are intimidated by what I do. I am open-minded about what a man does (ok, that wasn't always the case!), but find it important that he have some interest in learning for us to be compatible. AND…. its important that he carry his own weight financially.
I don't think it's true. When I was young, marriage never entered my mind. It did not effect my career choice at all. I think the partner choices we make are definitely influenced by our career and how much money we make. They got it backward.
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I'm curious to what extent the marriage factor could be a sort of subconscious thing. I, for example, certainly wouldn't say that my choices as to major in college and future career are affected by relationship possibilities, but I'm still a woman who probably won't be making a lot of money. Perhaps for some men they look at getting better/higher paying jobs as something to benefit their lives overall, without realizing that the relationship factor may actually be a part of their reasoning?
Of course, this is just me theorizing, so it's possible that I'm entirely wrong..
Marriage does not make a difference in my career aspirations, and I haven't heard it mentioned when talking to my college friends when they picked majors or chose to go onto grad school. My sample is male and female.
I have heard in some countries, women select their college majors to demonstrate that they are smart and can help educate the children when they become stay-at-home mothers.
That\’s a good point. I knew girls in college who picked specific degrees only because they knew they could meet the \”right\” guys there, and ended up dropping out before finishing it, and marrying the guy. Others, finished the degree but never used it.
What? Really? I didn't think that people actually went to school to get their "MRS"s anymore. It's really kind of sad when you think about it.
Part # 2
Now I will also go out and say this boldy…. I've met a lot of women with high salaries, holding high end positions and boy let me tell you; talk about having your nose high up, but I am sure that's not all. Just those that I've encountered. I don't look at my self any better, than the person who works in McDonalds. In fact I can relate to them, because thats where I worked at when I was 14. I appreciate everyone in their position, whatever they do, male or female, significant other or friend, as long as they are happy, I am happy for them. Now if they wanted to move up, earn more money etc and asked for help, I would be more than happy to help, but never impose it on them.
In the end, men/women should choose what they want to do, what makes them happy. If someone thinks that they are better than me, because they earn X amount more or they think I am not good enough, because I could earn more, well they are not for me, as a friend or spouse.
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I very much agree! And who\’s to say they\’ll always earn that forever? Things change.
Part # 1
Talk about a sensative topic! I would have to disagree with tha finding, in terms of what career/schooling choice I made, with getting married in mind one day. Personally I love what I do and chose to go to school for it (it being Marketing). I would never want to be in some job, just for the sake of money. I would rather work a fulltime job and a pt job, in order to make ends meet if I have to.
Part of enjoying the job, is actually liking what you do, who you work with and obviously money factors into it as well. When it comes to women, if she did not appreciate what I do or how much money I made in my current position, well she's not the right one for me to start with.
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I think that\’s a very healthy approach and one that I have taken too.
But it makes me wonder where those stats come from. Perhaps it\’s skewed towards a certain area, or have other factors we aren\’t considering.
Well, we have two sons in that age group that their first priority was deciding what they liked to do. Then the education followed, along with time spent at their professions. Then it was a relationship and marriage that has driven them. We always encouraged them to do what they were interested in and the money part would follow, so goes their dad as an example. As for women and coming at the end of the generation of the women’s movement, I’ve seen it go both ways for women, so I would say they may be happier if they follow what they like and let the relationship follow. You don’t have to loose yourself into someone else, but you don’t have to becrass about it either.
Perhaps the influence of parents is much deeper. You have to basically do what you want to do and like to do, and you will attract someone similar 🙂