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Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

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Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#191
post #163
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve read that one reason wealth inequality is worse today is because high-education-high-income individuals want to marry other HEHI individuals whereas in the past this wasn’t the case. If the claim about the past is true, it seems to undermine your point

Men generally do not care about the income of their wife, as that's not what they're innately attracted to. Hypergamy is characteristic of women and hence they want to marry up, and won't settle for someone who makes less than them. The latter is a reason for why there are so many educated but unmarried women today in their 30s and 40s.

> women are attracted to money and status! Not men!!!

Professionals I know in the 20-35 cohort only want to date other professionals. The ones that don’t want some weird stay at home trophy wife dynamic.

There’s nothing provably innate about some men preferring trophy wives. There is a lot of availability due to cultural baggage. The phenomenon that you’re talking about is culturally bound.

Anecdotally my wife makes ~150k more per year than me. She’s made more than me for like 80% of our relationship. I’ve stayed at home with our son.

We’re still top 1%. Neither of us care.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#192
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen.

> Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen. Of course you can. You can know thyself and know thy partner and have the maturity to understand what you're getting into, and the ability to commit despite that. EG: I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced, not because marriage is so easy but because we're both people who are able to…

Sure. However, there are plenty of not so straightforward people too who are very well aware of loopholes in our law, society and human psyche and they are happy to exploit them.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#193

I was disappointed they didn't include "homemaker" or "unemployed" so you could see which professions supported a family by themselves.

I think you'd see a lot of professions of people who culturally value a homemaker, not anything about the highest paying careers. My guess is that the list you describe would be dominated by the trades, trucking, and small business ownership.

This is true, I'm in a community that values having a parent at home with the kids. Many are on wages most would expect make it impossible but they live good lives.

Some very small business owners, charity works (earning very little) and a few high paid professionals.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#194
post #182

Ok, I can see the lopsided lawyers marrying lawyers, but how is it that software developers are so lopsidedly marrying other software developers when something like 90% of them are male? I guess pretty much every female software developer marries a male software developer which works out to the 12% number? Makes me sorta want to see a breakdown by sex. aka "male software developer has a 6% chance of marrying a softwa…

If you don't conflate gender with marriage, there's more opportunity for software developer couples.

definitely true. But same-sex marriages will not change that number pretty much at all

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#195
post #163
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve read that one reason wealth inequality is worse today is because high-education-high-income individuals want to marry other HEHI individuals whereas in the past this wasn’t the case. If the claim about the past is true, it seems to undermine your point

Men generally do not care about the income of their wife, as that's not what they're innately attracted to. Hypergamy is characteristic of women and hence they want to marry up, and won't settle for someone who makes less than them. The latter is a reason for why there are so many educated but unmarried women today in their 30s and 40s.

[deleted]

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#196

Ok, I can see the lopsided lawyers marrying lawyers, but how is it that software developers are so lopsidedly marrying other software developers when something like 90% of them are male? I guess pretty much every female software developer marries a male software developer which works out to the 12% number? Makes me sorta want to see a breakdown by sex. aka "male software developer has a 6% chance of marrying a softwa…

It would suggest a lot of software developers are unmarried.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#197
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd see a lot of professions of people who culturally value a homemaker, not anything about the highest paying careers. My guess is that the list you describe would be dominated by the trades, trucking, and small business ownership.

This is true, I'm in a community that values having a parent at home with the kids. Many are on wages most would expect make it impossible but they live good lives. Some very small business owners, charity works (earning very little) and a few high paid professionals.

Stay-at-home parents do a lot of financially valuable but unaccounted work that can come quite close to improving the family finances almost as much as if they had a job near the median salary.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#198

Ok, I can see the lopsided lawyers marrying lawyers, but how is it that software developers are so lopsidedly marrying other software developers when something like 90% of them are male? I guess pretty much every female software developer marries a male software developer which works out to the 12% number? Makes me sorta want to see a breakdown by sex. aka "male software developer has a 6% chance of marrying a softwa…

It would suggest a lot of software developers are unmarried.

Or they are married and their partner doesn’t work. Or things are getting combined like product managers into software developers.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#200
post #173
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve read that one reason wealth inequality is worse today is because high-education-high-income individuals want to marry other HEHI individuals whereas in the past this wasn’t the case. If the claim about the past is true, it seems to undermine your point

Social class seems to have always played an important role in marriage (e.g. Jane Austen as a primer on 19th-century upperclass British society), so I'm not sure it's fair to say that this is change from the past. But I think it's fair to say that it is a factor in concentrating wealth.

IIRC it was the book The Meritocracy Trap that detailed the change from past generations, but I don’t know the numbers or underlying sources off the top of my head
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