Latest / Trumponomics / 32: Your Sex Drive Is Widening the Income Inequality Gap

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32: Your Sex Drive Is Widening the Income Inequality Gap · Trumponomics

0:00
Speaker 1: I'm now better educated than my current wife, but I'm
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Speaker 1: not looking to divorce her simply to marry someone with
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Speaker 1: a PhD. That's good. This episode of Bloomberg Benchmark is
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Speaker 1: sponsored by HSBC, winner of Trade Finance America's sixteen Company
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Speaker 1: Award for Best Supply Chain Finance Bank in North America
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Speaker 1: HSBC where Ambition connects with Opportunity. Hello, and welcome back
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Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Benchmark, a podcasts about the global economy. It's
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Speaker 1: Thursday seven. I'm a Bloomberg News joining from my hometown
0:41
Speaker 1: of Tokyo. Also joining from DC is Tori Still Well,
0:44
Speaker 1: Hey Tor, Hey hockey. Hi, what's new. Well, the cherry
0:50
Speaker 1: blossoms are blowing in the breeze and it's pretty nice outside,
0:54
Speaker 1: so not too much they complain about over here. Oh nice.
0:57
Speaker 1: By the time our listeners here the show, though, the
0:59
Speaker 1: cherry awesomes will be gone. Well that got real depressing
1:03
Speaker 1: real quick. Well, you know, I think I'm back during
1:08
Speaker 1: the Edo period, and I think, like the eighteen hundreds
1:11
Speaker 1: or something, there was this big philosophy in Japan that
1:14
Speaker 1: what's beautiful, it's fleeting, So they went around and replanted
1:19
Speaker 1: a lot of the cherry blossom trees here to make
1:21
Speaker 1: sure that the trees on the ground were the kind
1:25
Speaker 1: of trees that bloom really quickly and then disappear really
1:28
Speaker 1: quickly too, So you know what's beautiful as fleeting. That's
1:32
Speaker 1: good to know. I like that. I'm gonna make a
1:34
Speaker 1: mix tape called that or something. So Aki, we have
1:38
Speaker 1: quite the topic today, right, we do? We do? We
1:41
Speaker 1: are talking about love and economics, which it's like the
1:45
Speaker 1: perfect melding of my two favorite topics. I've been an
1:48
Speaker 1: economics journalist for seven years now, so I can't help
1:52
Speaker 1: but think of everything through the lens of their economy,
1:56
Speaker 1: even for something as you know, romantic and and wonderful
2:01
Speaker 1: and mysterious as like love and love and dating and marriage.
2:05
Speaker 1: But love isn't always rational, isn't Acky, No, it is not,
2:09
Speaker 1: but we try to make it. I guess well, you know,
2:13
Speaker 1: today we're talking about this phenomenon called assortative mating um
2:17
Speaker 1: and it's when two people who are pretty similar to
2:20
Speaker 1: each other get married. So, uh, that can be referring
2:24
Speaker 1: to any kind of traits. It could be race and ethnicity,
2:27
Speaker 1: it can be income level. Today we're going to be
2:30
Speaker 1: mostly talking about education level. Acky it sounds like you
2:34
Speaker 1: went down sort of a rabbit hole when you were
2:37
Speaker 1: researching this topic, and I think it'd be fun to
2:40
Speaker 1: discuss a little bit of the broad findings in the
2:43
Speaker 1: research and then we can move on to a discussion. Yeah, definitely.
2:46
Speaker 1: Let's let's introduce our special guests with you in the
2:50
Speaker 1: DC studio first though. Richard Reeves is a Senior Fellow
2:54
Speaker 1: of Economic Studies and also co director of the Center
2:57
Speaker 1: on Children and Families at Brookings. Richard, thanks so much
3:01
Speaker 1: for joining us. Great to be here, Rocky, thanks for
3:03
Speaker 1: hug me. Hi. Tori, So, I guess before we jump
3:05
Speaker 1: into the show, I think we should talk about our
3:08
Speaker 1: own partners, since we're talking about a topic like a
3:11
Speaker 1: sort of mating. So, Tori, you met your boyfriend Tucker
3:15
Speaker 1: in college, right. Tucker and I have been dating for
3:18
Speaker 1: two and a half years now. We met in college,
3:22
Speaker 1: actually as freshman almost seven eight years ago, which seems
3:27
Speaker 1: like a really long time ago, and it is um
3:30
Speaker 1: but we did actually we actually did not start dating
3:32
Speaker 1: in college. We sort of rekindled our friendships slash live
3:38
Speaker 1: here in d C when I moved here in and Richard,
3:43
Speaker 1: what about you, are you married? Yes? I am. I
3:47
Speaker 1: feel like I've been lud onto a show under false pretentions.
3:51
Speaker 1: I've got lots of statistics about marriage patterns. I wasn't
3:55
Speaker 1: ready to talk about my own marital history, but but
3:58
Speaker 1: I'm happy to share it. I actually did marry someone
4:01
Speaker 1: who I met at college as well, my college sweetheart,
4:04
Speaker 1: but that marriage ended in divorce, so UM, sorry to
4:08
Speaker 1: pass that bad news on Torge. But the good news
4:10
Speaker 1: is that I then met my second wife, who was
4:14
Speaker 1: American and she's kind of one of the main reasons
4:16
Speaker 1: that I'm now here with this funny accent, and she
4:20
Speaker 1: and I met through work, so I guess you could
4:22
Speaker 1: say that the first marriage was assortative mating through education
4:27
Speaker 1: and the second one was assortative mating through occupation. But
4:31
Speaker 1: clearly clearly kind of selecting, or if you like, this
4:34
Speaker 1: is kind of pre online dating. UM still finding ways
4:38
Speaker 1: to end up with people with pretty similar education levels,
4:41
Speaker 1: the same in the case of my first marriage and
4:44
Speaker 1: similar in the case of my second marriage, although I've
4:46
Speaker 1: subsequently cheated because although we were both college graduates when
4:49
Speaker 1: we met, I've subsequently got a PhD. So I'm now
4:53
Speaker 1: better educated than my current wife. But I'm not looking
4:56
Speaker 1: to divorce her simply to marry someone with a pitch
4:59
Speaker 1: D good. I accept it, right, Hockey. What about you
5:11
Speaker 1: and Emily? Yeah, so my girlfriend Emily and I both
5:15
Speaker 1: have bachelor degrees, but Emily is about to start law
5:18
Speaker 1: school in September, so she's about to out educate me too.
5:22
Speaker 1: But for now, I guess we've fit into the box
5:26
Speaker 1: of assortative meeting. So the research is pretty clear on
5:30
Speaker 1: how we're marrying more people who share the same educational
5:34
Speaker 1: background as us. So one study found that people are
5:39
Speaker 1: marrying someone with a similar level of education at the
5:42
Speaker 1: highest rates since the Gilded Age. That's that's kind of
5:46
Speaker 1: a crazy statistic. So people were marrying, you know, amongst
5:50
Speaker 1: their own education levels at the turn of the twentieth century,
5:53
Speaker 1: and then throughout the first half of the nineteen hundreds
5:57
Speaker 1: that rate was going down a lot, so people were
5:59
Speaker 1: kind of mixing a lot more. And ever since, right
6:03
Speaker 1: around World War Two, it's been steadily coming back up.
6:06
Speaker 1: And it seems like that's happening in tandem with growing
6:08
Speaker 1: income inequalities. So Richard, sort of, what's the blame here,
6:12
Speaker 1: what's going on? I think we have to understand what's
6:15
Speaker 1: driving the increase in a sortative mating. So it's quite
6:19
Speaker 1: right to say that since the sixties, the proportion of
6:21
Speaker 1: people marrying at the same education level has increased, So
6:26
Speaker 1: now most people marry somewhat of the same education level,
6:30
Speaker 1: just over whereas it was down in the forties before.
6:34
Speaker 1: But that's against the backdrop of a massive increase in
6:37
Speaker 1: female education. Right. So one of the reasons why male
6:41
Speaker 1: college graduates are now marrying female college graduates um as
6:45
Speaker 1: opposed to the people who would have married is because
6:47
Speaker 1: there are a lot more female college graduates. There's a
6:50
Speaker 1: trend underlying underlying it, and so it's actually quite hard
6:53
Speaker 1: to know whether or not there was a sortative mating
6:55
Speaker 1: going on before on some other level, right interest i
6:59
Speaker 1: Q what that, but that that's now showing itself through
7:03
Speaker 1: education because women are obviously much more educated than they
7:06
Speaker 1: were before. So it's just simply a bit to use
7:08
Speaker 1: economic terms, there's just a biggest supply of female college graduates,
7:12
Speaker 1: which is meeting the demand of both men and women
7:15
Speaker 1: to marry someone of the same education level. And then
7:19
Speaker 1: that as you say that, as you say then is
7:21
Speaker 1: having an inadvertent byproduct of increasing income in equality because
7:27
Speaker 1: the other trend is that we see increasing wages for
7:29
Speaker 1: college graduates relative to everybody else, So the returns to
7:32
Speaker 1: college education have gone up. Now you've got more women
7:35
Speaker 1: who are college graduates, they are marrying male college graduates,
7:40
Speaker 1: so that's two college graduates per household and there and
7:44
Speaker 1: each of them are owning more than they were four
7:45
Speaker 1: years ago. So you add one trend on top of
7:47
Speaker 1: the other. And what that means is that quite a
7:50
Speaker 1: significant amount of the increase in income in equality, up
7:54
Speaker 1: to say a seventh of it, crudely speaking in calling
7:57
Speaker 1: to one of my colleagues, can be explained by a
7:59
Speaker 1: sort of mating, and by the rise in assorted mating.
8:02
Speaker 1: I think it's important to it's not a new phenomenon,
8:04
Speaker 1: it's just increasing, and that is a factor in growing
8:08
Speaker 1: income and equality. Right, you know, I was reading I
8:12
Speaker 1: think a study in sociology UM that also found that
8:16
Speaker 1: men were increasingly preferring women who had the same education
8:21
Speaker 1: level as them. So like when you kind of think
8:23
Speaker 1: about maybe like the nineteen sixties and a male lawyer
8:27
Speaker 1: might have married his female secretary, who is who maybe
8:32
Speaker 1: never went to college. But now more and more those lawyers,
8:35
Speaker 1: I think they're marrying other female lawyers, or maybe like
8:40
Speaker 1: a prominent client or something like that. Um or to
8:44
Speaker 1: how long have you been married to your current wife?
8:47
Speaker 1: It's just a trick question that you tripped deliberately trying
8:50
Speaker 1: to trip me into getting this wrong. So I think
8:53
Speaker 1: you can then to send this podcast to my wife.
8:55
Speaker 1: We've been married for fifteen years. Fifteen years and tour
9:00
Speaker 1: you've been with Tucker for two and a half years. Right. Yeah,
9:04
Speaker 1: So you guys probably don't know the world of online
9:08
Speaker 1: dating too much. But a year ago I was single,
9:10
Speaker 1: so I was using all kinds of different apps, and
9:13
Speaker 1: you know what kind of struck me was there all
9:16
Speaker 1: these services that let you explicitly filter people out according to, like, um,
9:21
Speaker 1: their education level, or their income bracket, or even like
9:26
Speaker 1: their race, so you could be like, oh, filtered by Yeah,
9:30
Speaker 1: it's become really controversial in the online and it's pretty terrible.
9:36
Speaker 1: And and even back when I was single, I was thinking,
9:38
Speaker 1: my gosh, this is really problematic, Like this is really
9:42
Speaker 1: you know, if the use of online dating grows, we
9:45
Speaker 1: might see even more assortative mating. If if people kind
9:49
Speaker 1: of tend to, you know, filter out according to these
9:53
Speaker 1: pretty superficial demographic characteristics. Um, Richard, do you have any
9:57
Speaker 1: thoughts on that? Yeah, it's I think that what's happened
10:00
Speaker 1: is that algorithms are being added to the assortative mating process.
10:04
Speaker 1: So you know, through these online dating platforms, you can,
10:06
Speaker 1: as you say, just filter out. So I think that
10:09
Speaker 1: there was there's a strong trend anyway to be meeting
10:12
Speaker 1: and marrying people of the same education level, but online
10:17
Speaker 1: dating just kind of takes that to a new level,
10:19
Speaker 1: which is that you you reduce the chance of even
10:22
Speaker 1: by accident, meeting somebody who isn't at the same education
10:25
Speaker 1: and you literally just take them off. You're not even
10:27
Speaker 1: in the market for that at all. So at least
10:29
Speaker 1: if in terms of non online dating, you might go
10:32
Speaker 1: to a party, you might get talking to someone and
10:34
Speaker 1: only part way through the conversation discover that they never
10:37
Speaker 1: finished their college degree or whatever. But by then you
10:40
Speaker 1: might already be interested in them. But if you've already
10:43
Speaker 1: filtered that out, then you're only going to meet people
10:45
Speaker 1: who you've pre selected on the base of their education level.
10:48
Speaker 1: So other things being equal, it seems almost certain that
10:52
Speaker 1: online dating will increase what is already quite a quickly
10:55
Speaker 1: rising level of assortative mating with all the benefits um
11:00
Speaker 1: at all the challenges that that brings. Right, there's I
11:03
Speaker 1: think there was one study that looked at the logs
11:05
Speaker 1: of an unnamed online dating company, and that study found
11:10
Speaker 1: that people definitely gravitate to other people, um, you know,
11:13
Speaker 1: who have similar characteristics, and that was on education level,
11:17
Speaker 1: income level, definitely recent ethnicity, and even some really random
11:21
Speaker 1: things like hey, we're we're. There's lots of ugly phrases
11:24
Speaker 1: in this We've had a sort of mating and algorithms,
11:27
Speaker 1: but perhaps the ugliest of all is marital homogamy and
11:31
Speaker 1: homogamy in the sociology literature, and that's just a very
11:34
Speaker 1: sociological way of saying people marry people who are like themselves.
11:38
Speaker 1: And that does reach beyond education into all kinds of
11:40
Speaker 1: other things. So it could include religion, for example, they
11:42
Speaker 1: could include to stend of your faith, it can include race,
11:44
Speaker 1: it can include all kinds of things. And that's a
11:48
Speaker 1: that that's a trend that's as old as human history.
11:52
Speaker 1: What's interesting, though, is that some of that is break
11:55
Speaker 1: is actually going in the other directions. So, for example,
11:57
Speaker 1: you are seeing increased marriage across rati all lines in
12:00
Speaker 1: the US that's actually been ticking up um and it's
12:03
Speaker 1: quite pronounced for Asian Americans, for example, quite likely to
12:07
Speaker 1: marry non Asian Americans. But across all races now there's
12:10
Speaker 1: been an increase in marrying across race lines, and so
12:13
Speaker 1: actually we're getting to the point now where it's more
12:16
Speaker 1: common to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity
12:19
Speaker 1: than to marry someone of a different social class. So
12:22
Speaker 1: the trends are going the other way, which is quite interesting.
12:24
Speaker 1: So you're sort of seeing more class segregation or education
12:28
Speaker 1: segregation in terms of marriage alongside less racial segregation by marriage,
12:33
Speaker 1: which isn't to say that we're anything like past racial segregation,
12:36
Speaker 1: but so the filters that we just talked about are
12:38
Speaker 1: actually it turns out that, certainly in terms of people's
12:40
Speaker 1: behavior and who they actually end up marrying, the education
12:43
Speaker 1: and class are playing, if anything, is slightly stronger role
12:46
Speaker 1: now than race, depending on the races that you're talking about. Wow,
12:50
Speaker 1: I want to take a short break here to hear
12:52
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, and then we'll come right back this episode.
13:00
Speaker 1: The Bloomberg Benchmark is sponsored by HSBC with over eight
13:03
Speaker 1: thousand global relationship managers on the ground in over sixty countries.
13:07
Speaker 1: HSBC makes your global ambition their local business HSBC. So, Richard,
13:19
Speaker 1: in a previous life, you were in government. Before you
13:22
Speaker 1: moved to the US A couple of years ago, you
13:24
Speaker 1: were the director strategy to the Deputy Prime Minister in
13:27
Speaker 1: the UK. And I understand your former boss made increasing
13:31
Speaker 1: social mobility a big part of this platform, right he
13:35
Speaker 1: certainly did, yes, And so you've spent a lot of
13:37
Speaker 1: time thinking about social mobility, and even since then you've
13:40
Speaker 1: written a lot about that, um, you know, making sure
13:43
Speaker 1: that we have the kind of economy where poor kids
13:46
Speaker 1: could rise the income ladder and eventually become you know,
13:49
Speaker 1: comfortable or even rich. And and so I'm wondering, like,
13:53
Speaker 1: does this trend of assortative mating doesn't concern you? Yes,
13:57
Speaker 1: it does, for for two reasons really want to is
14:00
Speaker 1: that it doesn't. It does add to increased incoming equality,
14:03
Speaker 1: which is obviously not the same thing as mobility, but
14:06
Speaker 1: can be associated with lack of mobility. So you do
14:09
Speaker 1: see that it adds to the widening economic divides. So
14:12
Speaker 1: there's that, and that other things equal economic resources do
14:15
Speaker 1: matter for people's life chances. So just purely economically assorted
14:19
Speaker 1: mating has has an impact, but I think I think
14:21
Speaker 1: it actually goes slightly more deeper than that, because we
14:25
Speaker 1: not only see the college graduates more likely to marry
14:28
Speaker 1: college graduates, but their marriages also tend to be more stable,
14:31
Speaker 1: they tend to be more likely to last, the children
14:34
Speaker 1: tend to be born within the marriage, and so on,
14:36
Speaker 1: and so actually what's happening in the US is that
14:38
Speaker 1: college graduates look quite traditional in their approaches to marriage
14:42
Speaker 1: and to divorce and to child rearing within marriage, contrary
14:45
Speaker 1: to what you might thought would happen, maybe in the seventies.
14:47
Speaker 1: But at the other end of the education spectrum, or
14:50
Speaker 1: even towards the middle, you're seeing more divorce, more children
14:55
Speaker 1: being born outside of marriage and then maybe subsequently leading
14:57
Speaker 1: to a marriage, but less stable marriages as well. And
15:00
Speaker 1: instability and parenting are huge factors for life chances for children.
15:04
Speaker 1: So it's almost as if the research suggests quite strongly
15:08
Speaker 1: that stability matters for kids life chances. Marriage is one
15:12
Speaker 1: way to provide that stability, especially in America quite different
15:15
Speaker 1: to Europe in that sense, and so it's almost as
15:17
Speaker 1: if upper middle class or college educated Americans they got
15:20
Speaker 1: the memo that it's good to get married first, then
15:23
Speaker 1: have your kids, make sure economically secure, and try and
15:26
Speaker 1: make the marriage last and raise your kids together if
15:27
Speaker 1: you can. And in fact, I think that's that's the
15:30
Speaker 1: role that marriage plays for a lot of Americans. Now.
15:32
Speaker 1: You don't need to get married to be dating or
15:33
Speaker 1: in a relationship or to have and you don't don't
15:35
Speaker 1: need it very often economically, So it's mostly about kids now.
15:39
Speaker 1: And so what that means is the kids who are
15:40
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to be born to college educated parents not
15:44
Speaker 1: only have more money and more educated parents, but also
15:46
Speaker 1: the family itself is more likely to be stable. And
15:49
Speaker 1: so we're seeing as one advantage pile on top of
15:51
Speaker 1: the other and at the other end and at one
15:52
Speaker 1: disadvantage pile on top of the other. That means in
15:55
Speaker 1: terms of intergenerational mobility is that the chances of your
15:59
Speaker 1: state as being inherited to some extent of ending up
16:02
Speaker 1: in the same place roughly on the ladder as your parents,
16:04
Speaker 1: if anything, that's getting worse and so Assortedive mating is
16:08
Speaker 1: one of those really interesting and difficult problems. It's much
16:11
Speaker 1: harder than ca to of education or affordable college order
16:14
Speaker 1: because it's this is about intimate life choices. How do
16:17
Speaker 1: you how do you go about fixing exactly? What does
16:18
Speaker 1: that do have? Conmagine the public policy that says, okay,
16:21
Speaker 1: we're just going to randomly choose your marriage partner for
16:24
Speaker 1: you can have state, you can have an arranged marriage policy,
16:28
Speaker 1: but deliberately you know, says no, No, you're a college graduate,
16:32
Speaker 1: so you're not allowed to marry a college Right. It's
16:34
Speaker 1: clearly we're in the realm of dystopian fantasies. Um. But
16:38
Speaker 1: I do think we might want to think a little
16:40
Speaker 1: bit about segregation more generally, segregation occupationally, segregation, geographically, segregation,
16:46
Speaker 1: education and now maritally, and the extent to which there
16:48
Speaker 1: are these sort of almost different lives being led by
16:51
Speaker 1: people of different backgrounds, which reduces the chances of meeting
16:55
Speaker 1: someone and marrying across those lines. So it may become
16:57
Speaker 1: quite self perpetuating. And so to that extent, I don't
16:59
Speaker 1: think new us, particularly those who have married assortatively to
17:02
Speaker 1: use that ugly word again, should throw any stones. I
17:06
Speaker 1: think as policymakers or as analysts of the economy and
17:09
Speaker 1: what's happening, I do think it's something that we have
17:11
Speaker 1: to take quite seriously in terms of understanding lack of
17:13
Speaker 1: my ability. We spent so much time hearing about uh
17:18
Speaker 1: fixes to income inequality in terms of tax policy and
17:21
Speaker 1: education policy, and um all kinds of other income redistribution schemes.
17:26
Speaker 1: But you know, I think the question here is are
17:29
Speaker 1: our own classist, snobby, maybe even a litist preferences to blame?
17:35
Speaker 1: And I think the answer is partially yes, Well, I
17:38
Speaker 1: think it's quite That's when it gets very difficult, because
17:42
Speaker 1: they are they are our preferences, and so the question
17:44
Speaker 1: then becomes just to whether or not we should be
17:46
Speaker 1: judging ourselves or other people for having those preferences. And
17:49
Speaker 1: I think I also think let's let's let's look at
17:52
Speaker 1: this from a positive aspect. We've looked at it from
17:54
Speaker 1: a negative one too, which is, look if one of
17:57
Speaker 1: the reasons why this is also happening and why men
18:00
Speaker 1: and women want to marry someone of the same education level,
18:02
Speaker 1: it's because gender roles have changed too. So that's the
18:04
Speaker 1: other factor here. So you mentioned earlier lawyers might have
18:08
Speaker 1: married their secretary, or a doctor might have married that's
18:10
Speaker 1: the stereotype, and now lawyers are marrying lawyers and that's
18:12
Speaker 1: the fact my brother is a doctor. Guess what, he's
18:14
Speaker 1: married to a doctor. Um. Right. So whereas when my
18:18
Speaker 1: mom was a nurse, she would date doctors. My dad's
18:20
Speaker 1: not a doctor, but she's so because she was a nurse. Now,
18:23
Speaker 1: the fact that women are our doctors and lawyers, and
18:25
Speaker 1: that men would prefer to be with someone who's a
18:28
Speaker 1: doctor or a lawyer is a sign of huge progress
18:31
Speaker 1: in terms of gender equas. So what you're saying is
18:34
Speaker 1: gender equality good tick, a long way to go, but
18:39
Speaker 1: but one of the by products of that with a
18:42
Speaker 1: sort of mating is increased household income inequality and possibly
18:48
Speaker 1: less intergenerational mobility. And so as with all of these things,
18:52
Speaker 1: there's always trade off, there's always costs and benefits to
18:55
Speaker 1: these different trends, and and and our job really is
18:58
Speaker 1: to try and sort through all those trends and see
19:00
Speaker 1: what the implications of them are, and not to say
19:03
Speaker 1: I think it's illegitimate really force policy makers to start
19:07
Speaker 1: casting judgment on who we should or shouldn't marry. Um,
19:10
Speaker 1: But it might be relevant to say this is one
19:13
Speaker 1: of the reasons why income in equality is so high,
19:16
Speaker 1: and that might put a different cast on arguments for
19:18
Speaker 1: more redistribution, for example, So it doesn't sound like, you know,
19:23
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders next proposal should be, let's assign all the
19:26
Speaker 1: spouses by lottery. Let's make it way more equal that
19:29
Speaker 1: way fund though that would be to hear him say, Richard,
19:34
Speaker 1: what do you think about, you know, widening economic inequality itself,
19:39
Speaker 1: changing our own meeting patterns, kind of the direction of
19:43
Speaker 1: causality in the other way. That's very interesting. So we
19:46
Speaker 1: have focused so far on the impact of a sort
19:48
Speaker 1: of to mating on income in equality. And actually one
19:51
Speaker 1: of the studies that you may have seen that certainly reds,
19:53
Speaker 1: shows that the Genie coefficient, which is a very wonky
19:56
Speaker 1: measure of income in equality, would be seven points lower
19:59
Speaker 1: in US were it not for assortative mating. So if
20:03
Speaker 1: people did if people did marry randomly using the lottery
20:06
Speaker 1: Tori's lottery idea, I'm calling it your idea, not my idea.
20:11
Speaker 1: So let's say we did do randomly, then the Genie
20:13
Speaker 1: coefficient would be point three four are than point four three.
20:16
Speaker 1: But in in layman's terms, what that means is that
20:19
Speaker 1: the US would be about as equal as France or Italy.
20:22
Speaker 1: So imagine your utopia or a dystopia where actually people
20:26
Speaker 1: are randomly marrying. Then that is that's the kind of
20:28
Speaker 1: effect you would have on income inequality. But at the
20:31
Speaker 1: same time, widening income in equality may add to assortative mating,
20:34
Speaker 1: as you just implied, because we see, for example, there's
20:38
Speaker 1: a widening gap in your chances of going to and
20:40
Speaker 1: completing for your college based on your parents income household income,
20:44
Speaker 1: a widening gap. So you're seeing that it's relatively more
20:47
Speaker 1: likely for children from affluent backgrounds to go to for
20:50
Speaker 1: your colleges and stay at them compared to kids from
20:52
Speaker 1: ball backgrounds. That gaps are widening over time. So guess what,
20:55
Speaker 1: Tory met her boyfriend at college. But it turns out
20:58
Speaker 1: that you're more likely to meet someone at college who
21:00
Speaker 1: is from themselves from an affluent background, and that's one
21:02
Speaker 1: of the reasons they're at college. Then you go and
21:04
Speaker 1: live in a certain neighborhood and guess what your neighbors
21:07
Speaker 1: are all kind of like you. And then you go
21:08
Speaker 1: and work in a certain kind of institution like the
21:10
Speaker 1: Brookings Institution or Bloomberg where guess what, you're surrounded by
21:13
Speaker 1: the people's are And so actually, what's happening is that
21:15
Speaker 1: some of the results of income in equality in terms
21:18
Speaker 1: of occupational, geographical and educational segregation and inqual might actually
21:22
Speaker 1: add to assortive meeting because candidly, you may not actually
21:25
Speaker 1: be meeting that many people who aren't of your educational
21:29
Speaker 1: level in order to date them in the first place. No,
21:32
Speaker 1: speaking of France and Italy, I'm actually headed off there
21:36
Speaker 1: for the next couple of weeks. What does it look
21:39
Speaker 1: like in other parts of the world? Is this? Is
21:41
Speaker 1: this an issue and a trend in other places? It is?
21:45
Speaker 1: So I can only actually speak to the UK, I
21:47
Speaker 1: don't I don't know the data elsewhere, but certainly within
21:49
Speaker 1: the UK, um it's quite a significant factor. Um. So
21:53
Speaker 1: you see the same educational and assorted mating patterns in
21:56
Speaker 1: the UK, and in fact, by some estimates, the the
22:00
Speaker 1: single biggest reason for a recorded decline in social mobility,
22:04
Speaker 1: so for social mobility getting worse in the UK is
22:08
Speaker 1: the increase in women's educational outcomes. Again come back to
22:13
Speaker 1: this trade off. So that was a really difficult finding
22:15
Speaker 1: for us in government and for those grappling with it,
22:18
Speaker 1: is that the more the more educated women were getting
22:20
Speaker 1: in the UK, the worst social mobility. God, why for
22:26
Speaker 1: the reasons we just identified. Because the educated women marry
22:29
Speaker 1: the educated men, they have high levels of human capital,
22:31
Speaker 1: which they then turn into higher levels of financial capital
22:34
Speaker 1: because of the returns to earnings, which means they can
22:36
Speaker 1: live in good neighborhoods or afford private schools, which means
22:39
Speaker 1: their kids do better. And so actually it's again one
22:42
Speaker 1: of these things where you saw in the UK a
22:44
Speaker 1: really interesting impact on intergenerational mobility, which is beyond the
22:48
Speaker 1: reach of policy. And indeed good news, it's good news
22:51
Speaker 1: and more women are going to college. But that good
22:54
Speaker 1: news did carry with their implications for mobility and inequality,
22:58
Speaker 1: which we should just be much about. Amazing, that's quite
23:02
Speaker 1: the dilemma. Well, Richard, thank you so much for joining
23:06
Speaker 1: us today. This was really a fascinating conversation. Thank you
23:09
Speaker 1: for having me. It's been it's been fun, and thanks
23:13
Speaker 1: to you all for listening to Bloomberg Benchmark. We'll be
23:15
Speaker 1: back next week and until then, you can find us
23:18
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg Terminal and Bloomberg dot com, as well
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Speaker 1: as on iTunes, podcast, Stitcher, and other platforms. While you're there,
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Speaker 1: please take a minute to rate and review the show.
23:27
Speaker 1: So more listeners can find us and let us know
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Speaker 1: what you thought of the show. We just love getting
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Speaker 1: your feedback and we really want to hear more. You
23:34
Speaker 1: can talk to us and follow us on Twitter at
23:37
Speaker 1: Richard Reeves Richard Lee Reeves for our guest Tori stillwell
23:42
Speaker 1: and Akito seven. See you next week. This episode of
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