SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
As the number of highly educated women has increased in recent decades, the chances of "marrying up" have increased significantly for men and decreased for women, according to a new study led by a University of Kansas sociologist.
"The pattern of marriage and its economic consequences have changed over time," said lead author ChangHwan Kim, associate professor of sociology. "Now women are more likely to get married to a less-educated man. What is the consequence of this?"
Kim's co-authored the study with Arthur Sakamoto of Texas A&M University, and the journal Demography recently published their findings. They examined gender-specific changes in the total financial return to education among people of prime working ages, 35 to 44 years old, using U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000 and the 2009-2011 American Community Survey.
Your dreams of finding a Sugar Momma may finally come true.
ChangHwan Kim, Arthur Sakamoto. Women's Progress for Men's Gain? Gender-Specific Changes in the Return to Education as Measured by Family Standard of Living, 1990 to 2009–2011. Demography, 2017; DOI: 10.1007/s13524-017-0601-3
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:44PM (2 children)
Marriage is plagued with magical thinking in our culture, with plenty of people believing that it's synonymous with a stable relationship (it isn't) or that it will instantly improve one's relationship (it doesn't). Some people are even dumb enough to believe that society would collapse without marriage, even though it's really just a social ritual. I'd like to see any legal options that are currently available to married couples be available to unmarried people in relationships as well, and then get the government out of the marriage business.
(Score: 2) by Scrutinizer on Thursday August 31 2017, @09:52AM (1 child)
I strongly agree with your latter point about the critical importance of ejecting government out of the business of marriage. Your former point could use some clarification, however: just what legal options do you suggest should exist between two people who have no formal relationship beyond the legal options that already exist between two random strangers?
Perhaps some of the "legal options" you want between two people can be optionally met without further changes to law. One example is a "power of attorney".
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 01 2017, @04:36AM
Your former point could use some clarification, however: just what legal options do you suggest should exist between two people who have no formal relationship beyond the legal options that already exist between two random strangers?
IANAL, so I can't go into a lot of detail here, and would love to hear from an attorney who actually knows about this kind of thing, but my idea is that marriage should simply be eliminated from law, and replaced with a new addendum to contract law. So basically, you'd have "civil unions", which can take many different forms, and are up to the people entering into the union. It wouldn't be limited to two people either, but it would be limited to legal adults of sound mind, just like contracts are today. No, minors can't participate, so stupid backwards states that let children get married will have to stop that; no one really needs to have a marriage-type union at 16 years old. Anyway, people could obtain a civil union of their choosing, and would probably need to run it by a qualified lawyer, or just choose one of a bunch of pre-vetted ones. These would include a lot of the stuff that today's "marriages" include: an agreement to share living expenses, a power of attorney in case one is incapacitated, etc., plus clear terms for how to handle things when the union is dissolved (this is a feature sorely missing from today's marriages, which we try to bolt-on with a "prenuptial agreement").
Ideally, there'd be some pre-vetted ones as I mentioned, or perhaps even one where you can pick and choose the terms and clauses, so you don't need to see a lawyer at all as long as you're not doing anything way out of the ordinary. These unions can even include more than 2 people. And it should be extremely easy to get one of these in place so you can have it done just as soon as you move in together, and it should be easy to dissolve too, for when things go south (this, as I said, would be built-in to the contract so it's not so messy). And if you want to "upgrade" to something with different (e.g. more committed) terms, that should be easy to do too.