Happy Valentine’s Day!
Now, let me ruin the romance for you by describing how economists view love and marriage.
Economists study and write about the “marriage market,” wherein, much like in a market for goods or services, individuals search for what they want and snag it when they find it. While prices in a marriage market are not always as explicit as those in a market for heart-shaped candies, they still do exist. In some cultures, they are, indeed, explicit, and take the form of dowries or bride-prices. In modern, western culture, the marriage price is negotiated as the terms of the relationship—who will perform what household duties, how shared bank accounts will be handled, etc.
Also like in the market for candies, preferences are important. More popular or more unique candies bring higher prices. A husband or wife who is desired by multiple potential partners is able to negotiate a better deal for themselves in marriage. They may not have to wash as many dishes as a less desirable partner.
Not surprisingly, what makes a potential partner desirable is different for each individual. Like in the market for jobs/labor, the marriage market is as much about search and matching as it is about negotiating a price and sealing a deal.
So, why do we match with the people we match with? And why do some folks choose not to participate in the matching at all? And is our matching really ideal? (If you resisted the urge to just answer “love” to these questions, you may be a budding economist.)
First, what brings us to the marriage market in the first place? Not knowing I was already writing this article, my Granny provided a great example last week. I was telling her about my really rough start to this semester: In the last five weeks, I had an infected cat bite on my hand, a head-to-toe allergic rash reaction to the antibiotic I was taking for that infection, a bout with Covid, and nasty a stomach bug. Somehow, my children have managed to stay healthy, and I am staying afloat at work, but it has been hard, to say the least. My Granny’s solution: “You need a husband.”
Granny is thinking like an economist. Marriage comes with economic incentives—a second income, a second set of hands to perform household work and childcare, and (Granny’s thought) insurance that covers your side of the work when you are sick. We come to the marriage market because life is easier with help. The data bear this out. Particularly among women, marriage rates decline as incomes and education increase, i.e., as they need less of a safety net.
But, once we are in the marriage market, with whom do we match? Contrary to the adage opposites attract, economists find that we tend to match with individuals who have similar incomes, education, political leanings, etc., to ourselves. But, our ultimate matches depend not just on our preferences but also on the pool of candidates to which we are exposed.
And, according to St. Louis Fed economist Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria, our matches are not ideal. Our matches promote the persistence of inequality in economic and educational attainment. She compares the marriage matches that would be made by an all-knowing and benevolent social planner to those we make in real life. The social planner’s guidance would lead us to matches that are both better for society and better for us as individuals than the matches we make on our own. Her conclusion is that we would do better if we simply devoted more effort to the search, widening our pool of candidates, and improving our chances of making an ideal match.
So, here’s to all the searching and match-making taking place this Valentine’s Day.
And, if you are happily matched, please don’t take this as my call for you to begin now to expand your pool. Ignore everything I’ve written; you are no doubt the exception to Restrepo-Echavarria’s findings. Maybe this just gives you something new and interesting to talk about at dinner tonight with your love.
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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.
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