Fascinating conversation between Russ Roberts and Branko Milanovic. Milanovic on assortive mating:
I looked at the cohorts of young, first, American males, men between the ages of 20 and 35 in 1970. And I looked at people who were in the top wage group. They were as likely to marry another woman from a top wage group as to marry somebody from the bottom. So the ratio is one to one.
Well, nowadays, for males, it’s three to one. So, they are three times as likely to marry a woman who is also from the same top income group as a woman who is from the bottom. But, for women, it’s even more dramatic. The change is five to one. It used to be one to one and it’s now five to one.
On who attends top universities:
percentage of people who go to the top schools and where the parents come from, of course, you have–I think actually I mentioned that in my book; that’s not my own number; I actually took it from somebody else–is the ratio is 60 to 1 between the top 1% and the middle class.
But some of the more interesting discussion comes later in the podcast. Especially around minute 80 when they talk about how when many things can be outsourced the role of the family changes, and this reduces family formation.
It looks like getting some Sun has been beneficial to you, Arnold.
Welcome back! Thank you!
Minor nit: assortative mating vs. assortive mating.
Welcome back.
There’s been a lot of discussion, especially around Oren Cass’s claims, about what’s the right inflation rate to measure changes in income, consumption, overall welfare, etc. in order to try to compare the lives of ordinary people over the last 50 years.
Now consider:
“But, for women, it’s even more dramatic. The change is five to one. It used to be one to one and it’s now five to one.”
That’s a really important “standard of living” consequence of male income, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t show up in anybody’s inflation statistics, though it should.
Haha, you forgot to turn the comments off on this one. It means I get to tell you how useful your blog has been through all this. It’s hard to find people who are skeptical of the lockdown’s effectiveness who aren’t also completely dismissal of how bad COVID is. And also a healthy dose of skepticism that anyone actually knows either.
I posted a review of Milanovic’s book, Capitalism Alone, here:
https://trotskyschildren.blogspot.com/2019/12/book-review-capitalism-alone.html
These discussions of class difference which focus exclusively on socioeconomic status (SES) are always missing an important factor. SES is highly correlated with IQ, and IQ is in large part genetically determined. Tut-tutting over inequality is a waste of time; people are born with different personalities, abilities, and social behavior. Of course this will produce different levels of affluence. It is reasonable to be concerned over poverty, that people have the means for at least a minimally decent standard of living. But why should anyone care whether Bill Gates has more money than Warren Buffet?
I haven’t listened to that one yet, but this weeks with Martin Gurri delved into the elites. He made the following observations on elites:
“I mean, I call this elite class, the Harvey Weinstein elites, because they have this strange way of living that seems so unusual and bizarre to an ordinary person.”
“And, I think our elites–and I have thought about this very carefully: Our current elite class is broken. It’s just broken. They have lost a sense of what it means to be an elite, which is: You give up a lot more than you get you.”
The assortive mating and “top school” matriculation feed these issues building in elites.
“Our current elite class is broken. It’s just broken.”
Noblesse oblige: eliteness ought to “extend beyond mere entitlements and requires the person who holds such a status to fulfill social responsibilities.”
Voluntary acceptance of burden and sacrifice is unsustainable as a norm without powerful incentives in the form of social bolstering and expected dividends of benefits to personal interests. Elites behave as you would expect capable people to behave when the system of incentives sustaining such norms has broken down.
If you want elites to consistently conspicuously practice the virtues and set the example of aristocratic refinement, stoic equanimity, martial courage, fraternal loyalty, bourgeois prudence, and altruistic generosity, then you have to tightly tether and correlate their personal welfare to that of those who would be positively influenced by that example. They have to rely on getting a share of the productivity or performance of subordinates from a lower station, that performance being enhanced by conforming one’s action to those more virtuous behaviors.
If, instead, elites mostly consort and deal with one another, with very few in given meaningful “leadership” roles, then the whole calculation of which signals to send, to whom, for what reasons, changes dramatically.
This is the real root of what people are complaining about, but it’s arguably determined not by mere agency or cultural degeneracy but by impersonal technological and economic shifts which are irreversible and likely beyond any attempt at control, and even if they weren’t, we have a scarcity of proposals for superior alternative arrangements.
I cannot believe anything we get worried about in our lives matters.
Constantly squandered thinking about the assorted things
that people experience each and every moment is simply really important, as no
other person will confront existence for any of us.
I feel that people have to be a whole lot more sane. Technology is delightful, yet a lot of whatever we might know about is indeed abstract.
Having a cup of coffee is a zen process that brings one back to the present instant.
We have to become more in the here and today, without being stressed by our lifestyle and the theatre we experience each day. https://911truth.org/politics911-identifies-911-truth-candidates/
Regarding assortive mating, is the data for the men and women themselves in the groups or their respective families? In 1970, it was much more common for women from upper-class families never to earn high wages themselves, but it would be misleading to think that meant there was no class-matching between marriage partners. The rise in the percentage of women pursuing serious careers and continuing to advance in them after marriage and children since 1970 seems like it has to skew the results (unless, again, they’re looking at parents’ income).
Milanovic is pointing out that capitalism appears to impose slow, long term changes on the individuals and societies that practice it.
Slowly, the majority figures out the same lesson previously only practiced by a few: laser like focus on marginal decisions. All the assortative stuff is just the culmination of those trends. This turns us into something else, and we don’t seem to like it as much.