{"id":8646,"date":"2010-01-20T12:35:05","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T17:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=8646"},"modified":"2010-01-20T12:35:05","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T17:35:05","slug":"marriage-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/01\/marriage-economics\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wedding\"Yesterday\u2019s New York Times<\/em> reports <\/a>that there has been something of a reversal of marriage fortunes between men and women.\u00a0 According to a recent analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center, \u201cMen are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women.\u201d\u00a0 Although other studies have shown that there continues to be a gender gap favoring men in wages (meaning that women earn, on average, somewhat less than similarly situated men engaged in the same work), it appears that the average wage imbalance in a given marriage is likely to be in the opposite direction.\u00a0 Trends in the last year have exacerbated this imbalance, since men were far more likely than women to lose their jobs in the recession.\u00a0 The report also notes that in married couples \u201cwives contribute a growing share of the household income, and a rising share of those couples includes a wife who earns more than her husband.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is interesting to speculate on the impact these trends will have on marriage and divorce.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It is possible that there will be fewer marriages, since fewer women will be motivated to marry for economic security as was common in days gone by.\u00a0 In fact, the article acknowledges that marriage rates have declined in recent years.\u00a0 The data are hard to interpret, though.\u00a0 On the one hand, women who have college degrees are more likely to marry than are women who don\u2019t have college degrees.\u00a0 On the other hand, anecdotal evidence like that reported in the article indicates that educated women feel that many men are threatened by the prospect of having a higher-earning wife.\u00a0 Some of these women would like to be married, but haven\u2019t found any takers yet.<\/p>\n

It is also possible that this trend will further reduce the number of divorce cases involving alimony awards to women, and possibly increase alimony awards to men.\u00a0 Alimony was originally conceived as a continuation of a husband\u2019s support of his ex-wife once the marriage ended, and came from a time when women\u2019s opportunities for self-support were few.\u00a0 Eventually, the law evolved so that alimony could be awarded to the lower-earning spouse, whether the husband or the wife, to maintain that person at some semblance of the marital standard of living or to obtain the job skills to be adequately self-supporting.\u00a0 Despite the gender neutrality of the modern concept of alimony, only a small minority of alimony awards are currently made to ex-husbands.\u00a0 Over the past several decades, alimony awards (whether to men or women) have been fewer and for shorter periods of time \u2013 a result that is consistent with evidence that women are more likely to be the higher earners in many marriages.<\/p>\n

Theoretically, we could see alimony awards remaining constant, while seeing a shift in awards away from ex-wives and towards ex-husbands.\u00a0 I suspect that there will be significant resistance to this happening, because the notion that men \u201cshould\u201d be breadwinners is still quite strong in this society.\u00a0 The Pew Research Center report also states that only the wife worked in\u00a0seven percent of households last year, up from\u00a0five percent in 2007.\u00a0 These numbers were higher in African-American households, where\u00a0twelve percent had only the wife working last year compared to\u00a0nine percent in 2007.\u00a0 The husband is a breadwinner in a large majority of households, and this is in keeping with our social expectations.\u00a0 There continues to be a gender stereotype that makes it difficult for men to successfully seek alimony from their working ex-wives.\u00a0 The fact that more men have lost their jobs in the Great Recession, coupled with the fact that financial woes put a strain on marriages, may challenge the traditional gender expectations.\u00a0 Perhaps more of those better educated, higher-earning wives will become ex-wives with alimony to pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday\u2019s New York Times reports that there has been something of a reversal of marriage fortunes between men and women.\u00a0 According to a recent analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center, \u201cMen are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women.\u201d\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}