Dollars and Sex

by Marina Adshade

  On the flipside, however, many women also married younger men.

  About 17 percent of newly married women ages 40 to 65 married men who were more than five years their junior. This is a big change from not that long ago; at the end of the 1970s, only 3 percent of marriages involving women under the age of 60 were between a woman and a man who was more than five years her junior. Thirty years later, the share of these “toy-boy” marriages had risen to 8 percent. More recent evidence suggests that in the ten years since this data was collected, the rate of toy-boy marriages has grown much larger still.

  A recent economics paper by Melvyn Coles and Marco Francesconi argues that this trend in women marrying younger men is the direct result of women becoming better educated—not just better educated than they were thirty years ago but also better educated than the group of men from which they are choosing their marriage partners.

  It appears that when given the choice, some men, at least, would prefer to have a wife who is perhaps older but more economically successful over a wife who is younger and less able to provide financial stability. According to the evidence, a woman who is better educated and in a higher occupational class than her husband has a 45 percent better chance of being married to a man more than five years her junior than does the average woman.

  FINAL WORDS

  We started this chapter talking about the Newsweek article that warned that women who spent time in school when they should have been looking for a man now had next to no chance of ever finding a husband. I have wondered over the years how many women gave up hope at that point and just didn’t bother looking for love; sure, 68 percent of women who were single and age 40 in the year the article was written eventually did marry, but was there another 5 or 10 percent who would have married had they not been discouraged? Or rushed into bad marriages for fear of being left on the shelf? Or underinvested in their education for fear that the cost of a college degree was the lost opportunity to have a family?

  As an economist, I know that the numbers do not look good for older women. When we add the assumption that older men will date only significantly younger women, I am not surprised that many older women believe they are destined for lives of lonely social exile. But just as the Newsweek predictions gave educated women a false sense that they would never marry, these statistics that report the skewed ratio of men to women in the seniors market give older women a false sense that they have no market power. And perhaps, just as dangerously, give older men exactly the same impression.

  Personally, I keep a postcard-size picture of the Newsweek cover pinned above my desk as a constant reminder of the power of statistical evidence to distort public perceptions in a way that is potentially damaging to people’s lives.

  Economic markets only function properly if all the players have all the information. If men overstate their market power, then some are bound to be disappointed in the long run. This probably isn’t an issue for men who are both wealthy and healthy; those types of men will always be in demand on a market where women (like my mother’s friend whom I mentioned previously) are apprehensive about dating men who may end up being a physical or financial burden. But wealthy and healthy men represent only a small fraction of men available on the later-in-life market.

  Let me give you an example of how this perception of market power by men can prevent the market from clearing properly. I have a friend who is in her mid-70s and is single and searching online for a relationship. She is, on every dimension, a catch—she has a good income, multiple recreational homes, she is healthy, very attractive, and knows how to have a good time. She told me recently that she had responded to an expression of interest she had received from a man through an online dating site with a standard “Hello, it’s nice to meet you” message. His response to her simple note was to send an angry diatribe in which he rebuked her for her lack of effort and informed her she should have considered herself lucky that he had messaged her at all. (Incidentally, it later turned out that he was, in fact, ten years older than he had claimed to be in his profile, making him ten years older than her.)

  In this case, two people continue to be single because one mistakenly believes that he holds all the market power and the other, who mistakenly believes that she holds none of the market power, would rather stay single than lower their relationship standards.

  I want to finish off with a little piece of evidence that I think speaks to the difference between what men and women get from their relationships later in life. In a study undertaken on sexual behavior of people over the age of 50, researchers found that the last time they had sex, men found the experience more pleasurable if their partner was a man or woman with whom they were having a committed relationship; 91 percent of men who had sex with a relationship partner had an orgasm compared with only 80 percent of men who had sex with a friend or casual acquaintance.

  Women, on the other hand, had a far more pleasurable sexual experience if their partner the last time they had sex was a man or woman with whom they were not having a committed relationship; 58 percent of women who had sex with a relationship partner had an orgasm, compared with 80 percent of women who had sex with a friend or casual acquaintance.

  This may not look like economic evidence to you, but it is—the markets for sex and love are far more complex than simple supply and demand.

  FINAL THOUGHTS

  Economics, as you probably already know, has two fields of general interest: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics seeks to understand the behavior of individuals, and so an economic appreciation of the markets for sex and love, essentially, leads us to apply theories that have been developed by microeconomists.

  Having said that, as we have worked our way through the various markets for sex and love, I have been struck by the profound influence that macroeconomic variables have had on the players in these markets. Macroeconomics seeks to understand the behavior of everyone in the economy, collectively, using variables like education, technology, national income (gross domestic product), unemployment, income inequality, consumption, and saving as part of the analysis. Whether we realize it or not, each one these variables has been influencing the way we approach our own love lives.

  Let me give you a few examples.

  We talked about how the ever-increasing importance of education in employment has helped shaped social norms around premarital sex in the twentieth century. Higher education rates of women are increasing promiscuity on college campuses and encouraging educated women to marry less-educated men. We saw that the expansion of Internet technology has contributed to the formation of couples who are more similar in terms of education and income than they were in the past and is improving the quality of marriages in a way that reduces divorce. Industrialization has played an important role in how we structure our marriages, and those same influences have made it easier for those of us living in industrialized nations to accept same-sex marriage. We learned that married partners are finding new ways to make household decisions as women’s earning abilities are becoming comparable to men’s. The growing divide in incomes between the rich and poor is not only making divorce rates higher than they might have been otherwise but also encouraging high school students from low-income families to engage in riskier sexual behaviors.

  It seems to me that if we want to predict where we are going as a society in terms of sex and marriage, we cannot ignore the effect that these constantly evolving macroeconomic conditions are having on very personal decisions.

  If I were to predict two trends that I think will be among the most important when trying to envisage intimate relationships in the future, I would choose technological change and the growing educational divide between men and women. Both have had significant impact over the past twenty years, and there is no reason to believe that they won’t continue to have a bearing on these markets in the future.

  And so, while acknowledging that economists have poor track records when it comes to making predictions, I would like to c
onclude with some of my thoughts on how these markets might change as we go forward.

  TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS

  As we have already seen, improvements in birth control technology in the middle of the twentieth century significantly decreased the risks associated with premarital sex. That change in expected costs, made possible by new technologies, helped to bring down social barriers that had been discouraging men and women from having casual sexual relationships. The result has been higher rates of promiscuity, increases in both unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, and an increase in the average age at which people marry.

  So, we already know that new technologies can have a profound effect on sexual decision making.

  Two new technologies that are on the very near horizon are unlikely to have such a large effect, but, nonetheless, I believe that STD testing technology and male birth control technology will change the markets for casual sex.

  Let’s start with an example of STD testing technology.

  British firms are sinking millions into a new technology that will enable people to test themselves for STDs using a chip purchased for less than $2 and their mobile phone. They argue that the technology could help reduce the high STD rates in the young adult population. But just as improvements in birth control technology have increased births outside of marriage, so might improvements in STD testing technology increase STD rates.

  This is how investors envisage this product being used: A young man becomes concerned that he has an STD but is nervous about going to a clinic to be tested. So instead, he buys a chip that he will either pee or spit on and then insert into his mobile phone. In a matter of moments, the nanotechnology in his phone will let him know if he has an STD. If infected, he will go immediately to a clinic (yes, the same clinic he was too nervous to go to just moments before) to receive treatment for the infection. He will then choose to use safe sexual practices until he is certain the infection is gone, presumably buying another chip to determine at what point he can return to using unsafe sexual practices.

  Before you know it, the nation’s STD rate has been cut in half—at least, that is the prediction made by those who are investing in this new technology.

  Here is how I envisage this product being used. A young woman has met someone in a nightclub with whom she would like to have unprotected sex. She buys the chip at a vending machine in the club (which is exactly where investors intend to sell them) and administers a self-test in the bathroom.

  At this point one of two things happens.

  The first possible outcome is that the device tells her that she is not infected with either of the two diseases the phone can identify (chlamydia or gonorrhea). She then uses this information to negotiate unprotected sex with her new partner. In fact, this is the real commercial value of the technology—to make it easier to negotiate for sex without a condom. That has to be true since the transmission of both these diseases can be effectively prevented by proper condom use.

  The second possible outcome is that the device tells her that she does have an STD—late at night, in a nightclub bathroom, under the influence of alcohol—while a willing member of the opposite sex is waiting keenly outside the door clutching his/her negative test results. This isn’t really an economic issue, but to me this seems like a terrible setting in which to discover an STD infection.

  If this technology encourages more young people to engage in unsafe sexual practices, then—even when used properly 100 percent of the time—the impact of this innovation will be higher rates of infection from the diseases the phone does not detect (for example, syphilis and HIV) and higher rates of accidental pregnancy. If not used properly, it could actually increase chlamydia and gonorrhea infections as well.

  In chapter 1, I predicted that access to male birth control technology (MBC) would erode women’s ability to negotiate condom usage and lead to a higher increase in STD rates. While I don’t think that MBC will increase promiscuity the way that female oral contraceptives did in the 1960s and ’70s (that horse has already left the stable, so to speak), there is one market in which people will likely change their behavior as a result of access to MBC technology: the teen sex market.

  This is best explained in a way that anyone who can imagine having a teenage daughter understands.

  Imagine your teenage daughter has a boyfriend who has been pressuring her to have sex with him for some time. She is not ready to take that step, however, and so far has been able to stall his attempts to take their relationship further by reminding him that an accidental pregnancy will make life difficult for both of them. One night he tells her that he has had treatment that will make him 100 percent sterile for at least the next six months.

  What is her bargaining position now?

  Making male birth control available to teenage men has the potential to decrease the age at which teens have their first sexual experience. I have said that there is no evidence that early virginity loss, without pregnancy, is harmful in a measurable way. However, having sex earlier is strongly correlated with having more sexual “events” in high school. If every additional sexual event brings with it an increased risk of infection and pregnancy, then MBC has the potential to increase both STD rates and accidental pregnancy in a population that is already at risk, even if condom use does not change.

  Of course, that assumption, that condom use will not change, depends on the willingness of teenage men to wear condoms even when they know there is almost no chance of pregnancy. I’ll let you make your own approximation of the percentage of young men who will make that decision.

  I am not advocating against these technologies, in any way. I just believe that before we embrace new technologies that promise to reduce either STD or accidental pregnancy rates, we need to recognize that, when new technologies become available, people change their behavior. If that behavioral response works against the primary goal of the new technologies, then they can’t begin to solve the problems they were designed to address.

  If you doubt me, just look at how much pregnancy outside of marriage has increased in the decades following the availability of safe contraceptives.

  THE GROWING EDUCATIONAL DIVIDE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

  As you are already aware, female students started to outnumber male students on college campuses at the end of the 1980s. This trend toward higher university enrollment of women, at all levels of education, has shown no signs of diminishing in the near future.

  Since we have already talked about the role this gender imbalance has had on sexual behavior on college campuses—increasing promiscuity and decreasing traditional dating—I thought we might talk about how this imbalance will affect a different group of women: those who have no education beyond high school.

  Most women and men postpone marriage and family until they have completed their education and so, on average, less-educated people marry earlier than do more-educated people. With more women than men enrolled in university, women who complete their education at the end of high school have an initial advantage on the marriage market. This is not only because they have access to the much larger pool of less-educated men, but also because the gender imbalance on the not-in-college market hands market power to women and, in theory at least, should increase the level of traditional dating on that market.

  In the long run, however, less-educated women are significantly more likely to divorce and, more important, less likely to remarry if their first marriage ends. That says that by the time university-educated women enter the marriage market, their market consists of both educated men and those less educated who are unmarried either because they remained single or are already divorced. And, as we have seen, educated women are not limiting their search to men who are older.

  With the number of educated women marrying younger, less-educated men on the rise, young women who did not go to college are now competing on the same marriage market as older, better-educated women.

  If it is true that, in this economy, familie
s care more about having well-educated children than they care about having many children and that educated mothers tend to produce better-educated children, then the value on the marriage market of less-educated women will fall even further. This is because educated men will change their preference away from having younger, more-fertile wives to having educated, slightly more-mature wives.

  Women outnumbering men in higher education programs will make it increasingly difficult for less-educated women to compete on the marriage market and force them to either choose between setting a reservation value for a mate at a low level (i.e., entering a low-quality marriage) or remaining single. With the marriage rates of these women already in decline, it seems that many are remaining single rather that entering less-than-satisfying marriages—even if that means they are raising children on their own.

  As we have seen, women who have little reason to believe that they will eventually marry are more likely to engage in riskier sexual behavior. This response to poor marriage prospects explains, in part, the high teen pregnancy and STD rates among economically marginalized women.

  None of this really is news, but rather it is a lead-up to a prediction I would like to make as to how social norms will evolve in the future as an indirect result of the growing educational divide.

  The very recent increase in the willingness of well-educated women to marry men who are less educated, younger, and/or have lower incomes than themselves is encouraging social norms to rapidly evolve along the same lines that social norms changed during the sexual revolution. This change in social norms, which has resulted directly from the changes in university enrollment, has the potential to revolutionize male/female relationships and will challenge traditional societal views of masculinity and femininity.