It’s easy to see the appeal of the selection story: Married people have many traits in common: willingness to commit, to defer gratification, to conform to social norms. Why then, though, do married men earn a large premium, while married women earn a modest penalty? Shouldn’t favorable selection enhance women’s earnings, too?
Read the whole thing. If beliefs were intellectual, rather than tribal, you would think that the same people who think that people would be more likely to either attribute causality to both the marriage premium and the college premium or to neither. The fact that so many people readily treat the college premium as causal and the marriage premium as coincidental (or vice-versa) is evidence for tribalism, in my view. In particular, treating the marriage premium as causal tends to align with civilization vs. barbarism, so that it appeals much more to conservatives than to progressives.
Perhaps the male characteristics that favor a married state indicate a greater differential in character for males than in females.
I guess I’m unusual in that I attribute causality to neither. 🙂 That said, Caplan makes some good arguments that there might be some effect from marriage on earnings, but so what? That’s a choice that people make, there’s little reason to praise or denigrate it, as it’s a subjective choice on their part, just as their choice to take hard drugs.
And I find his citing of the marriage penalty for women to be nonsensical. First, isn’t that also an argument against his own marriage premium, if the woman then earn less? Second, if he argues that it isn’t, why can’t the penalty be a selection effect, ie the type of conscientious man who tends to select for marriage also tends to select a wife who won’t gain as much, either because he wants someone who will raise his kids or not make as much as him or a variety of other reasons?
One can debate the effects of marriage all day long: my problem is when this pastime gets turned into public policy, pushing people into choices that may not be best for them.
I agree causality vs coincident is a barren distinction, trying to read too much or too little into what is a more complex relationship. One difference is college is usually much shorter and once completed cannot be undone, whereas marriage should be much longer and an undoing can be more costly than any gain.
This is very clever, creative, out of the box thinking, and I am completely convinced. However, people are naturally skeptical of claims that are not intuitive.
The story of learning and college classes causing productivity gains is very intuitive. People assume that without serious consideration. Marriage causing productivity gains is not obvious. Only a minority of people will take the time to seriously consider it with an open mind.
This isn’t tribalism, it is a non-obvious truth.