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What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

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Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#91

Post by linkregister »

ianai wrote: post #78
linkregister wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might actually be a leverage / tolerance question. Your employer knows that your peer would probably not be able to tolerate too much time away from children and are a higher risk of leaving if he were not able to spend that time with his child. Where unless you were to adopt a lifestyle with hard time requirements (mandatory night & weekend religious ceremonies), your employer knows you are less likely…

No doubt there are many factors involved. Clearly from my point of view it feels wrong and from other points of view it appears correct. A more interesting question to me is this: Those hours would allow me to have a more socially adjusted life. I would have more opportunities to meet women with similar views and personalities to my own (outside of work). I would have more time to date during traditional hours, for i…

If this were a universal problem for singles, they would adapt to socialize during non-standard hours.

Since it isn't, I suspect there's opportunity for you to change jobs or roles to trade off for the comparative advantages you have in your current role (maybe you have lots of opportunity to learn or have a pay premium).

I suspect that your situation is temporary, and once you have accomplished the short-term objectives you have in mind, you'll take advantage of a better opportunity.

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#92

Post by linkregister »

JBReefer wrote: post #88
linkregister wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even further compounded by the fact that weddings with preconceived children are unlikely to be genuine shotgun weddings in 2017. The social pressure to reluctantly marry after conception is drastically less intense than it was 60 years ago.

They'd probably need to conduct them in the regions where the "shotgun" part isn't a metaphor, like deep Appalachia or rural Missouri. I'm from Missouri and I promise, it's not always just a figure of speech.

If they did so, then the scope of their study wouldn't be national; it would only be regional. It wouldn't be relevant to national employment.

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#93

Post by Grustaf »

kefka wrote: post #61
TulliusCicero wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an individual homo economicus perspective, paying people who have heavy life obligations like kids less than people who can work tons of hours is rational. That's why government regulation is important if we want a different result.

> From an individual homo economicus perspective, paying people who have heavy life obligations like kids less than people who can work tons of hours is rational. Oh absolutely. That's why I'm coming at this from a purely business/economics viewpoint. It's stark, dehumanizing, and pretty damned depressing. I'd also argue, it's very much true (as in, fact practiced regularly, not a value judgement). > That's why gover…

>It's stark, dehumanizing, and pretty damned depressing

Most of all it's pretty short sighted and myopic. Even from a strictly economical perspective, and assuming all of the above is correct, we need new generations of people to be born, and someone needs to take care of them.

If women would be penalised for taking time off they would be less inclined to have children, at least if they have a well paying job. The long term consequences of that are quite bad.

Greedy algorithms are never optimal in macro economics. The local maxima are never global.

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#94

Post by tryitnow »

I don't really see a full fledged regression analysis here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/01/the_college_pre....

There are several potentially correlated variables (College grad and cognitive ability?). That's not necessarily a problem but I think it would necessitate showing different models, not just one.

It's also atheoretical - it's not advisable just to slap a model together and find regression coefficients with high t-stats. In economics, it's important to start with a believable hypothesis grounded in reasonable theory.

This study is like a half-hearted attempt at exploratory data analysis - half-hearted because only the results of one model are shown and there are no charts or graphs to give a feel for the data.

You really can't just jump to a conversation about causes unless you've done more work on the data (maybe Caplan did, but he really needs to show it to stimulate the conversation he wants to have).

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#95

Post by zaroth »

clarkmoody wrote: post #67
zaroth wrote: post #53

I didn't get much past the 3 hypothesis in TFA because I stopped and had to ask, isn't it obvious that married men earn more because they have to in order to support their families? It seems to me that the biggest factor in earnings is how hard you work. Nothing quite as motivating as needing to support your family... Married men earn more because they have to. There is definitely a secondary effect I have seen thoug…

Your points are encompassed in hypotheses #2 & #3...

Not at all! Married men are certainly not more productive because they are married -- marriage, and kids in particular, are a massive drain on productivity.

And being married certainly isn't a signal of being more productive, if anything the opposite.

I think the OP is assuming far more rationality in wage-setting than actually exists.

A single man in his 20s or 30s will be way more productive than the married man with the same experience. But the married man will be paid more "because he has a family to support."

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#96

Post by tyingq »

sjg007 wrote: post #13
tyingq wrote: post #6

Would have been interesting to see a breakdown by dual-income vs single-income, unmarried with/without dependants, etc. If you get married, and find yourself supporting a spouse, and potentially, children, you have new motivation to make more money.

They probably controlled for dual-income and dependents.

Probably, but a comparison of the two would seem more enlightened than just a comparison vs "shotgun weddings"...which is called out specifically.

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#97

Post by zaroth »

drblast wrote: post #64

In my own case, I'm working and making as much as I do because I'm married and have kids and my wife is a stay-at-home-mom. This is still a very socially acceptable arrangement. If I weren't married with kids, I'd be a semi-retired snowboard instructor. I am not driven by my career at all. I'm good at it, and I make good money, but I wouldn't otherwise be doing it.

Right! I guess economically you are "more productive" than your unmarried counterpart but it's important to note this isn't the result of natural ability manifesting in greater likelihood of being selected by a partner (utter nonsense) but rather, now that you have a partner you have a responsibility to someone else to maximize your income.

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#98

Post by geebee »

Grustaf wrote: post #93
kefka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From an individual homo economicus perspective, paying people who have heavy life obligations like kids less than people who can work tons of hours is rational. Oh absolutely. That's why I'm coming at this from a purely business/economics viewpoint. It's stark, dehumanizing, and pretty damned depressing. I'd also argue, it's very much true (as in, fact practiced regularly, not a value judgement). > That's why gover…

>It's stark, dehumanizing, and pretty damned depressing Most of all it's pretty short sighted and myopic. Even from a strictly economical perspective, and assuming all of the above is correct, we need new generations of people to be born, and someone needs to take care of them. If women would be penalised for taking time off they would be less inclined to have children, at least if they have a well paying job. The lo…

It is a problem. In some ways, this is why I'm ok with the government setting the rules, sometimes fairly strict ones. One example might be laws limiting business hours, or laws the make a certain amount of vacation leave mandatory. They violate individual freedom, but they may also make it possible for people to close shop or take a vacation.

Sweden recognized this problem - it created very generous programs for women, but realized that this was providing an incentive for women to leave the workforce, often in their 30s, an important decade for rising through the ranks, while men remained in the workforce. They then created more generous incentives for me, but discovered that the men weren't taking them - partly because of social and organizational pressure not to (perhaps related to the article I posted above). They finally created a very generous "use it or lose it" system where the men were just walking away from too much benefit not to take the policy, and I believe launched a major campaign to get men to take the leave. The idea is to create enough of a critical mass that the "male child leave" stigma would fade and this would become the norm.

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#99

Post by patrickg_zill »

kefka wrote: post #42
geebee wrote: post #28

There may be one under-reported angle on this. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264513198_Penalizin... There is clearly a correlation between men having children and men getting higher salaries, and the reverse for women. However, this may reflect the fact that women are more likely to withdraw from work to take care of children (regardless of whether they'd prefer to), and men may double down on work. Women…

So, is it fair to pay women less? /dons firesuit Discussing marriage, pregnancy, childbearing status or the like is an absolute no-go for employers. So, the ideal solution is to consider all women capable of this. Because of women's protected status of childbearing and leaving/returning, it would seem from a pure business perspective, that women are liabilities that can leave the job at any time and get it back, lega…

Unfortunately you just described why women should not be trained as doctors in the USA, where the total number of people trained each year is capped.

Or rather, why doctor training should not be capped in the USA.

If training was not capped, we could expect different results and there would be no argument concerning male/female, given the expense of training.

Re: What Is the Male Marriage Premium?

#100

Post by AnimalMuppet »

zaroth wrote: post #95
clarkmoody wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are encompassed in hypotheses #2 & #3...

Not at all! Married men are certainly not more productive because they are married -- marriage, and kids in particular, are a massive drain on productivity. And being married certainly isn't a signal of being more productive, if anything the opposite. I think the OP is assuming far more rationality in wage-setting than actually exists. A single man in his 20s or 30s will be way more productive than the married man wi…

You want stereotypes? OK, I'll give you stereotypes.

A single man in his 20s is a slacker. He works hard enough to not get fired, and not much past that. A married man of the same age works hard enough to try to get promoted so he gets paid more. Which is going to be more productive? (Yeah, I know, you say the married man has a lot more distractions - but the single guy is hitting Tinder every minute his boss's back is turned. That single guy is less distracted? I doubt it's an unambiguous win.)

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