[sverige]

There's also the high risk of marriage ending in divorce and losing half (or more) of your financial assets when the relationship falls apart. That has been keeping a lot of men from marrying, which is another factor that drives some portion of them to avoid marriage by design.

[DrScump]

It's not a binary choice between only marriage and only random looks-based hookups.

I hope.

[smnrchrds]

Wouldn't that only be the case if there is a huge disparity in wealth and income between spouses? If professionals marry other professionals, similar to how doctors mostly marry other doctors, that shouldn't be a problem.

[paulddraper]

> Wouldn't that only be the case if there is a huge disparity in wealth and income between spouses?

IDK about "huge", but that is often that case, one way or the other.

[closeparen]

Given the gender pay gap, we should almost always expect there to be such a disparity in straight couples.

Women's representation in a field (like software engineering, at 16%) is an upper bound on the share of men in that field who could possibly marry female professional peers.

[smnrchrds]

I didn't mean that software engineers should marry software engineers, geologists marry geologists, etc. What I meant was professionals should consider marrying other professionals, e.g. a software engineer marrying a geologist.

[closeparen]

What the gender pay gap tells us is that the category of "professionals" at any given income level is far from gender-balanced. It's not mathematically possible for everyone to marry within their income bracket.

[Mz]

Yeah, love should have nothing to do with marriage. It should totally be about bank balances.

/s

[smnrchrds]

Love is important, but it is not the only factor. I think we both agree that future plans, e.g. whether or not one wants to have children, are important factors that should not be overlooked. I believe that economic status, religious and political beliefs and affiliations, risk tolerance, etc. are also important considerations. None of them is a deal-breaker, but these are all things one should carefully consider before getting married.

[sverige]

With the current divorce rates, the odds are greater than 50% that bank balances will come into play eventually. Love doesn't pay the mortgage at that point.

[Mz]

I'm divorced. The divorce was amicable. Two people sincerely trying to not screw each other over as they leave does make a difference in real terms.

Furthermore, the high general divorce rate does not actually mean that any given individual has a greater than 50% chance of ending up divorced. That is not how that works.

[sverige]

Income is one factor, but it's still a crap shoot even if both make similar salaries. That's why divorce lawyers make such a good living.

[sokoloff]

Shouldn't...unless there are kids in the picture.