Higher Earnings No Longer Lead to Marriage: Culture is Changing

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm delve into several studies examining how male earnings impact marriage and fertility rates. They discuss findings from economic shocks like the U.S. fracking boom, which significantly increased wages and job opportunities for non-college-educated men, leading to increased births both within and outside of marriage. Contrary to popular beliefs, the study found no significant increase in marriage rates despite higher earnings. They also compare results with older economic booms and explore the influence of changing social norms. The hosts highlight other relevant studies on job displacement, lottery winnings, and their effects on fertility and marriage, ultimately emphasizing that simple financial solutions alone are insufficient to boost fertility rates significantly without addressing deeper cultural and social issues. The conversation rounds off with humorous anecdotes about their personal lives and parenting experiences, offering a reflective and engaging exploration of these complex topics.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about some studies that recently came out. Well, some recently came out, some came out a while ago. But looking at the topic of how earnings affect marriage rates and fertility rates and that surprisingly. For males, they no longer seem to increase marriage.

Or, I mean, who goes against the narrative that you always hear on the right? Yeah, this

Simone Collins: is important. In fact, we did an episode in which we read one of Arctotherium's articles on Aporia, where he basically posited that The solution to birth rates would be to effectively economically disempower women by sort of removing them from bureaucratic roles or eliminating those roles entirely, and to economically re empower men with a supposition that this will increase marriage rates.

Turns out that's not how it plays out in reality, at least in a post crisis world. Women earning money and having careers era.

Malcolm Collins: [00:01:00] Yeah. All right. So i'll start here with the first study This is a new one that I found really interesting male earnings marriageable men and the non maritable fertility evidence from the fracking boom so this study exploited the economic shock from fracking booms across the U.

S. regions. From 1997 to 2012, fracking created localized economic booms that significantly increased wages for non college educated men. They examined how marriage and birth rates responded to these economic improvements. Key findings, labor market effects. Fracking booms increased earnings for men without college degrees by 4.

4 percent. Per thousand dollars of new production per capital job opportunities also increased for these men with spillover effects beyond the oil and gas industry birth effects, both marital and non marital births increased in response to fracking booms. The increase was statistically significant for both types of births to suggest children are quote unquote normal goods.

People have more when income rises. [00:02:00] So I need to break down that a little bit because another study is going to look at this as well. Which is to say that there are some types of goods that people consume more of as income declines or economic slumps. Oh,

Simone Collins: oh, yeah, like I remember when we used to work in the private equity world more.

One, one period a group of investors were like, Oh yeah, we love nail salons because during recessions, women go to them more because it's like one of those small indulgences that they can still afford. Even if they want to

Malcolm Collins: buy more of like fancy soaps, fancy soaps, fancy soap company people do more on What are some of the other things people do more on?

They do more entertainment. They do more video games. Video games go up in recessions. Movies I think go up in recessions. Other types of entertainment goes up. So kids are not that type of good. And, and, and note what's being said here. Births increase. As money increases for uneducated men, which is great.

This is an area where that is

Simone Collins: really interesting that basically out of [00:03:00] wedlock births are increasing and people are choosing to have kids when they

Malcolm Collins: have more money, just not in wedlock. Is that a similar economic impact from the UBI study did not increase births. So handouts, not so much, but increasing the jobs or economy and male economic

Simone Collins: empowerment does.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But to marriage effects, this is where it gets more interesting. Contrary to the reverse marriageable men hypothesis, there was no evidence that marriage rates increased. The data showed no reduction in never married rates. Or increase in marriageable rates. These findings were consistent across different modal specifications.

Fascinating. Social context comparison. They compared these results to the Appalachian coal boom of the 1970s to 80s. During the earlier coal boom, increased earnings led to more marriages. And marital births was a decrease in non marital births. This contrast suggests social norms may have changed, may have changed, they've definitely [00:04:00] changed.

That's what's changed. Yeah, because I think it's clearly changed. I mean, it reminds

Simone Collins: me a lot of Sweden. How they're, they're There are a lot of parents who just aren't married and it's sort of after that becomes normalized. It's really hard to get people to marry again.

Malcolm Collins: What's interesting here is that areas with high baseline non marital birth rates Showed a similar increase in marital and non marital births But areas with low baseline non marital birth rates only showed an increase in marital births.

Basically, this means if you live in an area where people were already having a lot of kids outside of marriage then you have an increase in the number of kids they're having outside of marriage. If you don't if you live in like a more conservative religious area, then that doesn't increase the non marital births, which is really fascinating.

So, the authors conclude that while improved economic prospects for men might have previously led to more marriages before childbearing in today's context, economic improvements lead to more births, both marital and non marital without necessarily increasing marriage rates and [00:05:00] in great natural experiment, there was the regions where you already have a lot of out of marriage births in the regions where you don't, which shows that in some regions, they've maintained this older culture.

But in the regions where they've maintained the older culture, fascinatingly, it didn't lead to more marriages.

Simone Collins: That's really interesting. It really, it looks at the interplay between economics and culture in a way I haven't seen research do for quite some time. And it's so fun to see that someone looked at this.

Malcolm Collins: Isn't that fascinating? But let's look at other studies so we can, we can drill into what other people have found on this particular subject.

Simone Collins: Well, actually,

Malcolm Collins: I want to pontificate on this more because,

Getting, getting lounge Malcolm here. So what does this mean? It means that anything you could do to increase economic situations is good for fertility rates.

So increasing general economy increases birth rate thus doge Elon amazing for everyone but government employees. [00:06:00] Um, uh, Yeah,

Simone Collins: except so the whole reason I learned about this