Tag Archives: marriage

03.25.2013 | Gender Issues: Old Maid No More

By Lilli DeBode, guest blogger, senior at Kent Place School

Earlier this month, a report called “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America” was released. The researchers studied different socioeconomic classes to determine the average age at first marriage in each class.

The report brings up two very interesting effects that postponed marriage age has on the status of women.

For women higher up on the socioeconomic ladder, getting married at an older age means more time to develop skills for the workplace. Postponing a family would allow a young woman to figure out what she wants to pursue in her life before settling down. These extra years provide enough time for her to really get on track towards her goal—be it economic or otherwise.

Unfortunately, women in the working class are faced with a predicament. 58% of first births to middle Americans are outside of marriage. In other words, these women are starting families, (bringing about all of the costs of not being able to focus solely on work) but they still lack a partner to help support their children. 80% of middle Americans still aspire to get married, but it is becoming more common to marry after the first child is born. Officially, for women as a whole, the median age at first birth is 25.7 while the median age at first marriage is 26.5.

So for the college educated young women of America, this increase in marriage age is working in their favor. Only 12% of these women have children before marriage, leaving the other 88% free to either begin climbing the corporate ladder or pursue other dreams they have. Lower-middle class women, however, get the disadvantage. For them, later marriage age doesn’t mean later children age; it means later support and assistance with said children.

Sources and Resources: To read about the Knot Yet report, visit their website. For a look at how delayed marriage affects divorce rate, check out this article.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: delayed marriage, Knot Yet, marriage, marriage age
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12.05.2012 | Female or Male Leftovers?

For Chinese women, success can be a problem.

China’s working women are becoming more affluent. And perhaps for that reason, there has been a backlash. The single, intelligent, successful female has been maligned by the All-China Women’s Federation, a state feminist agency. Calling them the “leftover” (sheng nu) women, the government agency has suggested these ladies should be focusing less on their careers and more on finding a man. One journalist connects the “leftover women” campaign to China’s extra men–118 for every 100 women–that resulted from China’s one child policy. Hoping to marry, the last thing men need is a choosy 30-year old date.

With women achieving professional success, with their status in marriage ascending, and with men having to prove their desirability, China is seeing how economic change has affected the institution of marriage. Yes, arranged marriages were the norm until the 1980s, even though Mao outlawed them 60 years ago. But now, as Gong Haiyan, the woman who founded China’s largest online dating service explains, women looking for men list as their key criteria, his salary, his house and his height. Instead of leftover women, as a New Yorker writer suggests, it sounds like China has leftover men.

Our bottom line: In The Price of Everything, Eduardo Porter says that as women increasingly entered the labor force in the US, American society profoundly changed. One cause of the change was the new price of women’s labor. Once women worked outside the home, they became more “valuable.” Sounds like China.

A final fact: Looking at a list of the wealthiest 100 people in China, you would see 6 female self-made billionaires. All in their 40s except for one, and all married except for one, 4 of these affluent women made their money in real estate.

Sources and Resources: Reading about the changing relationship between men and women in China, my favorite article was the New Yorker profile of Gong Haiyan, the woman who started Jiayuan (“Beautiful Destiny”), China’s biggest online dating service. The New Yorker’s notes about China took me to the articles about “leftover women,” here and here. Finally, for China’s female billionaires, here is the Forbes list.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: All-China Women's Federation, arranged marriage, China, Chu Lam Yiu, Eduardo Porter, Forbes wealthiest people in China list, Gong Haiyan, Jiayuan, leftover men, leftover women, marriage, self-made Chinese female billionaires, sheng nu, The Price of Everything, tradition, Wu Yajun
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09.01.2012 | Living Solo: Part 2

Soup and ready-made meals sales are soaring in Brazil. The reason is probably more singles. In the United Arab Emirates, if you are over 30 and female, there is a 60% chance you are unmarried. For Japan, 31.5% of all households are one-person.

Looking at Japan, we would see a contracting population but more households. The reason is a growing singles population that has a distinct economic impact. A person in an affluent nation who moves into a new apartment needs consumer durables (goods lasting 3 years or more) that include a refrigerator, furniture, a TV, maybe a washing machine. Single people tend to live in apartments rather than houses.

There are some universal causes of single living. People are getting married later, there is more divorce, we are living longer and marriage is no longer as attractive. In China and India, male baby selection results in too many bachelors looking for wives.

Where are we? While single person households are increasing around the world, we should be wary of generalizing. We can remember, though, that when more people live alone (please see graph below), it is a major demographic shift that affects demand for certain consumer goods and services.

This Economist article provides an excellent overview of the trend toward living alone around the world and was the source of my graph. It also led me to a Euromonitor report on Japan’s singles. For unmarried mothers specifically, this NY Times Magazine article was interesting because of its focus on 2 families and also provided a sound statistical base.

Econlife Living Solo: Part 1 is here.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: aging, Brazil, consumers, demand, demographics, divorce, durable goods, households, Japan, living alone, marriage, single women, United Arab Emirates, US
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04.18.2012 | Living Solo

I’ve just started to count the people I know who live alone. School friends, relatives, neighbors. Some are in their twenties and early thirties, unmarried. Others are divorced. Several are widowed.

31 million of us live alone. Almost one-third of all households in the U.S. are composed of one person. Five million adults, younger than 35, live alone.

In 1950, living alone was the exception. Not any more. Why?

Maybe because of affluence, feminism, and technology. An increasingly affluent society has increased our life spans. With one spouse outliving the other, a woman (more typically) or a man is left to live alone. Women working outside the home have less dependence on a spouse. Women can marry later (age 26.5 average) and leave a marriage more easily. Fifty percent of all mariages will probably end in divorce.

And with pets becoming family members and the proliferation of social media, are we really alone when living solo?

The bottom line? Ups, downs, and long term economic trends have touched the very essence of how we live. When the economy dipped, more college grads moved in with their parents. More people postponed marriage. More postponed divorce. On the other hand, with the upward trajectory of the economy between 1940 and 2000, we became more of a live alone society.

This New Yorker article started me thinking about living alone and is the source of my statistics. In “The Boomerang Generation,” you might look at research from Pew for insight about multigenerational living and here is the census data that confirms the increase in single person households. Finally, for more about the impact of economic growth on our lives, I always love to return to Pursuing Happiness by Stanley Lebergott.

An interesting single household fact: In 2000, Utah had the fewest single person households and Washington D.C the most.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: economic growth, marriage, multigenerational households, single person households, technology, women
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12.16.2011 | Marriage Data

When a valid research study with dependable numbers says the marriage age has climbed to historic heights, should we assume its conclusions are valid?

Not necessarily.

In Economix, Catherine Rampell describes the problem. Her story begins with a Pew Research Center study telling us that a typical bride (age 26.5) and her new husband (age 28.7) are much older. As a result, “In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are.”

However, a University of North Carolina sociologist points out that the base year, 1960, is misleading. A marriage age graph between 1890 and 2010 looks like a flattish “u” with 1956 the low point and 1960, close. By selecting 1960, the study placed our current marriage age in a misleading time frame.

You also might want to listen to this econtalk discussion about other studies with conclusions that could be re-examined.

The Economic Lesson

Fiscal, monetary and regulatory policies depend on accurate statistical research. After Nobel Prize winning economist Simon Kuznets (1901-1985) developed the concept behind the GDP, the country could respond to the business cycle more appropriately. Also because of Dr. Kuznets’s work, we could reallocate resources more appropriately during the Second World War.

An economic question: How might later marriages affect government’s economic policies?

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: marriage, Simon Kuznets, statistics
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