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A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

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Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#161

Post by mcphage »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #94
drumhead wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men dont really care about the income of their partner, they're more interested in physical attributes. Maybe women have set much higher standards and the majority of men dont meet those standards. Maybe men just dont want to get married?

Source? I can envision a decent proportion of men, at least myself and a few I know, who would find it preferable to have a redundant source of income in the household. Even if a woman ends up becoming a non income earning partner temporarily or permanently, having one who is capable of earning more can be a desirable trait for multiple reasons.

> Source?

Well, generally men do the proposing, and as far as I am aware, most proposals are successful. So if the number of marriages are declining, then it means men are not proposing—either they are uninterested in getting married, or they are but don’t reach a point in their relationships where they believe a proposal would be successful. Not sure what the distribution of those is.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#162

Post by lotsofpulp »

mcphage wrote: post #161
lotsofpulp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I can envision a decent proportion of men, at least myself and a few I know, who would find it preferable to have a redundant source of income in the household. Even if a woman ends up becoming a non income earning partner temporarily or permanently, having one who is capable of earning more can be a desirable trait for multiple reasons.

> Source? Well, generally men do the proposing, and as far as I am aware, most proposals are successful. So if the number of marriages are declining, then it means men are not proposing—either they are uninterested in getting married, or they are but don’t reach a point in their relationships where they believe a proposal would be successful. Not sure what the distribution of those is.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/middle-class-marriage-is-...

Page 82 and on have graphs:

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.30.2.79

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#163

Post by drumhead »

hospitalJail wrote: post #152
drumhead wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men dont really care about the income of their partner, they're more interested in physical attributes. Maybe women have set much higher standards and the majority of men dont meet those standards. Maybe men just dont want to get married?

I have gotten close with some female engineers, and until recently they never mentioned their dating preferences. They were explaining how a night went down "I didn't want to approach them, he wasn't that tall, but she insisted so we did anyway. He was kind of cute until he took off his hat. His friend was country and I love country." They explain the night, how they went to different tables and had different drinks.…

The "3 Sixes", 6-pack, 6 feet tall and 6 figure salary, any two of those three tend to give you a very good chance of success.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#164

Post by cmrdporcupine »

brvsft wrote: post #80
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but it's a lot less conspirational than that. The early 70s is when the long post-war economic boom ended, and corporate profits globally began to contract for an extended period of time, long wave decline. Along with it came a longer term trend of declining take-home earning rights, a huge decline in unionization, waves of inflation followed by severe recessions, etc. The gold standard stuff is hilariously red…

> The gold standard stuff is hilariously reductionist. Not really. Ending the dollar's convertibility into gold obviously had a severe impact on how foreign economies viewed the US and the dollar. I think it's "hilariously" ignorant to pretend that this wasn't a factor. The economic reality for the US was that, before this, we just had to print money for the value of $100 worth of gold. Meanwhile, other countries had…

You just made a long circle to come back to the same fundamental point which is that the backing of the currency is tangential to the main issue: industrial capitalism in the west was heading into a new phase. Really a kind of return to the "normality" of the pre-war, 1930s, really. Because after WWII the US especially got paid a huge dividend by being able to capture and control all sorts of of the world market. But there were natural limits to how far this could go before it was saturated.

Reconstruction of Europe, huge population boom, control over new overseas territory, massive reduction in competition from European nations which had lost their colonies (and a large part of their own native labour force), huge investments in housing & infrastructure, it's hard to overstate just how massively growth focused the years from 1945-1965 or so were. The closest comparison would be the massive growth that China has from the mid-90s til recently.

The outburst of left wing and cultural radicalism in the late 60s, the Vietnam war, heavier US involvement in central America, the decline in corporate profits in the 70s, the development of computing technology and information automation, all of these are connected with the fundamental saturation and then decline in the growth capacity of US imperial economic power...

When limits to growth are hit, the response is usually some kind of crisis -- because capitalism requires continuous growth. War either colonial or against other colonial powers, social turbulence, etc. etc.

Dropping the gold standard was just one of the panic-moves performed by US capital interests to try to salvage things. And honestly, it likely had little to no effect.

After the mid-90s there was a reprieve from this for a bit, as the collapse of the USSR and the opening of China to western industrial interests opened up new economic horizons. Which now seem to be closing off.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#165

Post by CountSessine »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #155
wonderwonder wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacement fertility rate is 2.1. There is also a built in commonality in Israel as everyone has something in common, they are all jews. Your point of higher than most of the western world is very valid though but I wonder if the "we are all X here" lends itself to that.

I think Israeli society is more diverse than that. Do Soviet jews have a big sense of unity with Mizrahim? Why is this different from any European country, where share of immigrants is probably lower than in Israel?

I don’t think that Jewish organizations like Birthright discriminate. They want all Jews to have children. I can’t think of anything equivalent to Birthright that operates on a national level.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#166

Post by talldatethrow »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #97
talldatethrow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably a man. Women care a lot about income.

In my experience, women care a lot about income when their partners can’t keep a job and they are the only ones working. I’ve seen relationships end over that. But I’m guessing that’s not what you mean.

That's the most extreme example, sure. You don't see the other common examples, of a woman struggling to stay attracted to her bf or husband that consistently makes 1/2 of what she does.. because it doesn't happen very often (outside of extremes like very high earning women).

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#167

Post by Balgair »

_2z1p wrote: post #154
Balgair wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you don't marry someone that is going to do that, right? It's not like you have a coin flip chance at a happy life or an unhappy divorce. You can influence the odds here. In fact, you can really stack the deck in your favor, so to speak. Sure, people lie and people change, but it's not like you have to get married after a certain amount of time. You can wait to see what the person is like at their worst and t…

Of course nobody marries somebody expecting it to end in an unhappy divorce. The problem is that there are 2 single points of failure in a marriage, and you only control one of them. I can be the best husband I can possibly be, work hard, provide for my family, love my wife with everything I have, and otherwise do what I can to try to make her happy. However, if she choses not to reciprocate this, there's literally n…

I guess that's the magic of a marriage. You both change and you find out another way that you love them.

Yo can look at it as a downside or as an upside.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#168

Post by mikem170 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #56
29athrowaway wrote: post #19

The chart is just another "wtf happened in 1971" moment. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ What happened in 1971? The Nixon Shock, which is when the dollar stopped being convertible to gold after it became evident that the US did not have the gold it claimed to have.

Sorry but it's a lot less conspirational than that. The early 70s is when the long post-war economic boom ended, and corporate profits globally began to contract for an extended period of time, long wave decline. Along with it came a longer term trend of declining take-home earning rights, a huge decline in unionization, waves of inflation followed by severe recessions, etc. The gold standard stuff is hilariously red…

I agree, at least partially. The U.S. had half the world's GDP at the end of WWII, most other advanced economies had their manufacturing base bombed to smithereens. The couple decades after the war were boom times in the U.S. And an anomaly. This was surely one of the bigger factors amid several.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#169

Post by lockhouse »

Balgair wrote: post #167
_2z1p wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course nobody marries somebody expecting it to end in an unhappy divorce. The problem is that there are 2 single points of failure in a marriage, and you only control one of them. I can be the best husband I can possibly be, work hard, provide for my family, love my wife with everything I have, and otherwise do what I can to try to make her happy. However, if she choses not to reciprocate this, there's literally n…

I guess that's the magic of a marriage. You both change and you find out another way that you love them. Yo can look at it as a downside or as an upside.

Absolutely! Change isn't all bad, it's just that it happens. Ideally as a couple you'll grow together over the years instead of apart.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#170

Post by ForHackernews »

29athrowaway wrote: post #126
ForHackernews wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, you mean if only we were still on the gold standard, then I'd be worthy of love? #Im14&AustrianEconomicsIsDeep

No. It means that the Bretton Woods economic system was very favorable for Americans while it lasted. And the middle class could afford a house, a car, have multiple kids, send those kids to college, and have the living standard referred to as "the American dream". You could even get a job without a college degree, marry in your 20s and sustain a household on one job.

Might also have a little something to do with the fact that the USA was the only major economy that didn't have its industrial base bombed out during the war. The monocausal explanations from mises.org and friends have always seemed less than compelling to me.
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