marriage – Mr. Soni's Math Diary

Study Finds More Reasons to Get and Stay Married

At least they tried to control for 1 variable. They controlled for happiness level prior to the marriage, which has nothing to do with happiness while married. But, this study is still rubbish due to survivorship bias. People who are happy with their marriage will stay in the marriage. People who are unhappy may not stay in the marriage, and are not part of the study. To really measure if marriage causes happiness, you must run a controlled experiment and randomly assign people to a control and treatment group. The results of an observational study are invalid and meaningless. The article should conclude that “People who are in great marriages and decide to stay married …are happier than single people”

Incidentally, the article headline implies “Marriage makes you happy” Meanwhile, they later state the effect of living together makes you just as happy as legal marriage. So, they show that marriage has nothing to do with happiness, yet the headline states the exact opposite. Another case of a headline that the masses just accept at face value.

Study Finds More Reasons to Get and Stay Married

They appear, for example, to focus more critically on the earnings potential of prospective mates. Because house size is often assumed to be a reliable signal of wealth, a family can enhance its son’s marriage prospects by spending a larger fraction of its income on housing.

For example, when Shang-Jin Wei, an economist at Columbia University, and Xiaobo Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute examined the size distribution of Chinese homes, they found that families with sons built houses that were significantly larger than those built by families with daughters, even after controlling for family income and other factors. They also generally found that the higher a city’s male-to-female ratio, the bigger the average house size of families that have sons.

Mr. Wei reports that many families with sons have begun to add a phantom third story to their homes, one that looks normal from the outside but whose interior space remains completely unfinished.

“Marriage brokers are familiar with the tactic,” he reports, “yet many refuse to schedule meetings with a family’s son unless the family house has three stories.”

Supply, Demand and Marriage