Your Money or Yourself
Most people care a lot more about money than I do, but even so, almost no one wants to be married for their money. It’s puzzling. You might say that since marriage is a long-term contract, people only want to be married for traits that they will keep for a long time. But that cuts against the obvious fact that people care a lot about the appearance of their spouse, even though looks generally fade long before money does.
Another possible explanation for the asymmetry is the discrete nature of the marriage contract. Right after someone marries you for your money, they no longer need you for your money, because (prenup aside) they can divorce you and grab a big chunk of your lifetime income. Maybe that’s right, but even if you’ve got a Massey prenup, you still want to be married “for yourself,” not your money.
When economics fails, I usually try to supplement it with psychology. Maybe the main reason people don’t want to be married for their money is that we don’t believe that people can love someone for their money. You can feel strong attraction to someone’s personality, looks, intelligence, or success, but not money per se. The catch is that once you start loving someone for one or more of these traits, you often stay in love with them after they fade. You get addicted to the pusher, rather than the drug.
Perhaps this is too much of a man’s perspective. It’s hard not to feel disgusted at a man who marries for money, but we judge women who do so far less harshly. And the reason, I suspect, is that men almost never fall in love with a women for her money, but some women can fall in love for a man for his money. But that doesn’t sound quite right to me. Like George Costanza, “I know less about women than anyone in the world.” Still, aren’t women much more attracted to success than money? An average guy who inherits millions isn’t interesting to women in the same way that a self-made millionaire is.
Whatever the explanation, the fact that people don’t want to be married for their money explains some puzzles about the marriage market. For one thing, it explains why people prefer to marry within their social class. If you’re rich guy, you would rather marry a rich girl because you know she’s not after your money. If disaster struck her family fortune the day after the wedding, you might not care at all about the financial loss, because at least you know that she married you for yourself.
An even bigger puzzle we can explain is why men don’t exploit the INS marriage loophole far more than they do. By going to the world market, the typical American man could probably use the lure of citizenship and a First World standard of living to find a wife who is better-looking, younger, and less demanding than he could find in the States. Roll your eyes if you must!
But only an idiot wouldn’t wonder “Maybe she’s just marrying me for the green card and the green.” And that’s usually enough to overpower the palpable benefits of casting a wider net.
The post appeared first on Econlib.
Staying within economics, the contract implied in marriage is very hard to enforce, so being married for your money is a problem. Most people want to be loved, not just now but later as well. If someone can marry you and get access to your money and then do whatever, why believe they will be a good companion or do any of the other things we would expect from someone who loves us? A spouse for whom being with you in their benefit from the marriage is more likely to treat you well, or at least be pleasant to spend the next 60 odd years of quiet evenings with.
I am not so sure all this "love" talk is so true - in any case very many (maybe most) marriages in India, Arabia and Europe - well, in most post-hunter-gatherer societies - for most of the last several centuries were NOT primarily for "love". - Obviously one would prefer a partner with compatible views (same culture and language helps a lot). AND with fine income potential (even if that partner is supposed to take care of the kids later): he/she can bring money home before+after and part-time. Tough luck with that , if your spouse is mail-order/ beach-pick-up from Thailand, Morocco or Guinea. - Otoh: If you met in an US-college, the passport of your spouse will usu. matter: zilch.
One more thing (as all my partners and spouses had other passports than mine): I hardly understand the meaning of "love yourself" - thus I agree with Nietzsche: "The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions." - I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.