Marina Adshade is an economist at Dalhousie University. She writes regularly on the economics of sex and love on her blog Dollars and Sex
It has occurred to me recently that my choice of profession, both because of my investment in education and early career, has inadvertently ruled out any possibility of success in the marriage market.
To economists the idea that the choices we make have "inadvertent" outcomes is inconsistent with the notion that all of our choices are rational. So, from the perspective of an economic model, at some point in my life I stood at a cross road fully informed that if I took this educational and professional path I would seriously limit my marital options later on.
Perfect foresight should have told me that not only would I find fewer potential partners at my education level - many of whom are happy to marry someone with less education - but that by the time I got around to marrying I would have to compete with the women in the generation that followed my own; the ones who choose a different path.
New research out of the University of Laval and CIRPÉE asks the question: Can women have it all? Or is the disproportionate representation of men in high-power jobs explained by women choosing to invest earlier in the marriage market rather than risk not being successful in that market later in life?
When women are young they face a trade-off between investing in a high-power profession or entering the marriage market and investing in home production (including having children). The opportunity cost of early entrance to the marriage market is the difference between what these women will earn and what they could have earned had they postponed marrying.
On the other hand, the opportunity cost of postponing marriage is decreased competitiveness on the marriage market as a result of decline in fertility that women experience as they age. When the wage premium is high, all women will postpone marriage, and women can in fact have it all – a professional career and a family. If the wage premium is low, however, women who postpone marriage lose out on the marriage market to younger, relatively fertile, women.
Here is a thought though. If a low wage premium and declining female fertility explains the under-representation of women in high-power professions, and the greater contribution women make to home production, then do tax policies that compress wages actually contribute to this inequality between the sexes? If we value our progressive tax system (which we do) then it seems that abandoning this system would be a high price to pay to encourage greater female career investment and more even distribution of household chores between men and women.
Of course, all of this depends heavily on rational behaviour and perfect foresight, which is a tall order at the best of times but become increasingly implausible when it comes to matters of the heart.