Dollars and Sex (25 page)

Interestingly, the usefulness of marriage as insurance in unstable economic times is the reason that Jane ultimately chose a relatively recession-proof occupation for herself—being an academic. At the time that she made that decision, it seemed that if John were going to keep losing his job, then she would need to find stable employment in order to keep the family afloat. Even though she could have chosen an occupation that would have given her a higher income, her choice was the best decision for them as a couple, given the economic environment in which they lived. It turned out she was right to be cautious.

Jane's story, and the other stories that are told here using data and economic theory, remind us that marriage is an economic arrangement. Recognizing that helps us to understand the ways that marriage has changed over the past half century and, just as important, it helps us to see where marriage is heading in the future.

I told you in
chapter 1
that a Pew Research Center survey found that young adults, in particular, no longer see the point of marriage, with 44 percent reporting that the institution is outdated. This perception that marriage is obsolete almost certainly stems from the fact that marriage has changed in response to the increased ability for women to be financially independent. Independence of women does not, however, make
marriage irrelevant. To the contrary, it increases the value of marriage as a form of insurance in hard times, as families are no longer wholly dependent on a man's ability to earn.

From an economist's perspective, the most surprising way that marriage has changed is in the way that people choose their marriage partners. When economists first started talking about marriage, the best approach was to apply theories of trade that predicted that opposites should attract. As women have become more independent, however, and divorces easier to obtain, men and women are choosing marriage partners who are actually very similar to themselves. One possible explanation for this phenomenon (besides those that we have already discussed) is that the increased need to share decision making is encouraging men and women to choose partners whose objectives are closely aligned with their own.

This sorting over traits, to me at least, signals an increase in the quality of marriages and is a good indicator that, while fewer people are marrying, those who do are happier than married couples in previous generations. That observation, and the fact that marriage gives couples greater financial stability, suggests that marriage as an institution is extremely unlikely to become obsolete in the future. It will be different, but given that the economic environment influences the way in which marriages are organized and given that the economic environment is always changing, that should come as no surprise.

We are going to leave marriage now to return to a discussion that we started in the first section of this book: promiscuity. The promiscuous individuals in this chapter are not the adult men and women we talked about in
chapter 1
, nor are they the college students we talked about in
chapter 2
. They are the new generation of sexually active adolescents, and you may be surprised to discover that they are the first generation in a long time that is less sexually active than their parents.

THERE IS A NEW NORMAL WHEN IT COMES TO TEEN SEX

I was talking to a friend's son recently about his love life. He is tall and handsome, so I figured that, at the age of 17, he probably had a girlfriend. He said, “Nope, no girls until I'm 21,” to which I responded, “Only boys until then?”

My intention was not to be facetious. In some preindustrial societies, boys were encouraged to have same-sex relationships in adolescence as a way of discouraging premarital childbirth and postponing marriage. To me this illustrates just how what we believe to be “normal” sexual behavior, especially when it comes to adolescents, is really culturally and economically determined; in one society, same-sex relationships between adolescents is perceived as advantageous for the group (for example, by delaying female fertility), and in another, detrimental (for example, by challenging traditional heterosexual marriage).

There is a relationship between the economic environment and what societies believe to be socially acceptable adolescent sexual behavior. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean by that.

The first example is the relationship between the age at which a young person can legally consent to sex and how long people are expected to live. Economic well-being influences individuals' health and, at the
societal level, average life expectancy. When life expectancy is low, we find that the age at which a woman can legally consent to sex is also very low. For example, in the United Kingdom in the sixteenth century, the age of consent was 10 years old. At that time, the average life expectancy at birth was thirty-seven years. If people are not going to live very long, then, as a society, you want them to get onto the serious business of reproduction as early as possible. So average life expectancy (an economic outcome) influences societal norms that govern the age at which sexual debut is acceptable.

The next example is the relationship between the age at which people are encouraged to marry and population pressures. Really, the example I just gave, of age of consent in the United Kingdom, is not a particularly good one. At that time, land in the United Kingdom was extremely limited. In a largely agricultural society, with a fixed amount of land, any increase in the size of the population threatens the well-being of everyone. In the absence of reliable contraceptives, a strict prohibition of premarital sex is a good way to limit fertility and prevent population increases from diluting available resources. So limited resources, such as land, increase the age at which society considers it appropriate for a couple to marry. In the United Kingdom in the 1600s, the average age at which women married was 25; societal norms discouraged early marriage as a means to reduce population growth and prevent living standards from falling as a result.

The approval that society feels toward adolescent girls giving birth is related to another economic outcome: the return, in terms of increased future income, to formal education. When having an education does little to increase your income, society takes a favorable view toward adolescent childbearing because becoming a parent early has little influence on future income. When countries industrialize, however, and better-educated workers can earn substantially more than less-educated workers, society begins to take a more disapproving view of teens giving birth—even within marriage—since it limits their productivity in the future.

Economic factors also influence how much sexual knowledge a society feels is appropriate to give children. Our ancestors didn't worry about when it was the right time to have “the talk” with their children.
When homes were small, children grew up with parents who had sex in the same room in which the children were sleeping. Our preoccupation with “protecting” our children from sexual knowledge is directly related to the size of our homes. As we have grown wealthier, we have managed to prolong our children's ignorance in matters of human sexuality and, as a result, open dialogue around sexuality with children has become taboo.

Finally, advances in technology have had a huge influence on society's opinion of same-sex relationships and gender identity. The advancement of Internet technology, for example, has made it significantly easier for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youths to discover that there are others like them in the world. Thus, technological innovations have encouraged those with sexual tendencies that differ from the mainstream to act on those tendencies and to publically disclose their sexuality. This disclosure has led to a shift in cultural attitudes and, again, economic factors have played a role in that transition.

Before I tell you the economic evidence around evolving norms toward teen sexual behavior, let me tell you another story.

If you remember Sarah from
chapter 2
, you will recall that, despite her unfortunate pregnancy, she was determined to finish college. Sarah wasn't a virgin when that story started, but you may be surprised to find out that in high school she refrained from sexual relationships altogether. Sarah didn't become sexually active until her college application was accepted, her scholarships were in place, and she had registered for the fall classes that she would later fail as the result of her mistimed pregnancy.

No one had actually ever asked Sarah if she had wanted to go to college. To her family, and her circle of friends, the transition from high school to college was as obvious as the transition from middle school to high school: it wasn't up for debate. But it wasn't those expectations of a college education that had made her sexually cautious in high school (after all, several of her friends were sexually active) but rather a friendship she developed in grade ten with a quiet boy named Troy.

Troy was not Sarah's boyfriend, but she enjoyed spending time with him enough that when he invited her to come and spend the night at his house, she was willing, mostly because she believed their relationship to be platonic. Sarah's mother objected, having observed the behavior of teenage boys for longer than Sarah, but was liberal-minded enough to allow Sarah instead to spend time at Troy's house one day after school.

Troy lived in a part of town that Sarah had never been to before, in a home that belonged to the city's social housing project, an area affectionately known as “the pubs.” He lived there with his aunt (who had been given custody of him by social services when he was removed from his mother's care at the age of 9), the aunt's new baby, and an 18-year-old cousin. In addition to these full-time residents, while Sarah was visiting, the cousin's 17-year-old girlfriend also came by to drop off their 10-monthold baby, so that she would be free to head to the mall with her friends.

There were two things about this visit that made a lasting impression on Sarah and later informed her sexual decision making. The first was the condition in which Troy was living; she had never been in a home that was in such a poor state of disrepair. This saddened her on behalf of her friend, but more to the point, she was struck by the unsuitability of these living conditions for raising small children. When she looked forward to her own life as a mother, she wished for so much more than this family was able to provide the two babies who lived here.

The second event that made an impression was prompted by Sarah herself when she asked Troy if he was planning on enrolling in the college stream-level math and English classes in grade eleven. She knew Troy was a good student and so was surprised that, instead of answering her question directly, he tentatively looked to his aunt for guidance. To Sarah's amazement, his aunt quickly dismissed this idea with a wave of her hand responding, “Why would you waste your time taking courses that are only for people who plan to go to college?”

This was the first time that Sarah understood that optimism toward the future is a privilege that not all her friends enjoyed. She later realized that the sexual decisions made by those friends, for example, risking pregnancy and becoming pregnant, were their responses to pessimism about their future, a pessimism that she did not share.