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The economics of love and sex
After two wonderful years at Big Think, Dollars and Sex has found a new home at MarinaAdshade.com. Please visit me there to keep up with my blog and to get information on my new book, Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love, which will be released in the spring of 2012. A very big ...
It appears that workers in at least one industry will be benefiting from an income redistribution from the wealthy next month – strippers in Tampa Bay. According to The New York Times , club owners in that region are ramping up hiring in anticipation of a massive increase in demand for adult ...
The one thing you can count on in social science research is this: Inquiry will continue until the preferred hypothesis has proven to be true. Proponents for abstinence only sex education are no doubt celebrating new evidence that, on the surface at least, supports their belief. Before funders put ...
Don’t you just hate it when people that you fundamentally disagree with say something that you know to be true? Back in March, Brian Brown, president of the National Organization For Marriage (NOM), said “Corporations should not take sides in a culture war that pits a company against the majority ...
Here’s a question I have been struggling for years: Why do we marry? I am not confused about the desire to have a wedding – the pretty dress, standing before family and friends, the party – that part I get. It’s the need to seek the government seal of approval of the marriage that challenges me ...
Over the past few posts here at Dollars and Sex, we have been talking about two behaviors that online dating sites encourage that make finding a mate more difficult – excessive filtering and pursuit of the “perfect” mate. New, yet unpublished, research finds some evidence that US states in which ...
Have you ever come across a dating profile that includes the phrase, “I won’t settle for less than perfect, and neither should you”? It seems that the vastness of the online dating market has encouraged a change in attitude among singles away from “I could do worse” towards “I could do better ...
I can’t shake this feeling that access to online dating is actually making it more difficult for men and women to find love. I know that sounds counterintuitive, especially from a market perspective, but what should have been a useful tool to encourage matching has encouraged a response that is ...
To lesbian mothers everywhere I have this to say – welcome to the community of second-rate parents. Don’t worry, you won’t be lonely here. You will have lots of company among us single and divorced mothers who have doomed their children to miserable lives. You thought you were doing a good job, I ...
If you want to know why you are still single you might try posting a dating profile on a Scandinavian website. According to a friend of mine, online searchers there are brutally honest about why they aren’t interested. This is painful for her, undoubtedly, but very informative for us because it ...
American citizens adopted 13,407 fewer international children in 2011 than they did in 2004 – a 60% decline from that peak year. The biggest decrease has come from the adoption of girls – the ratio of boys to girls has gone from 0.54 to 0.79 – and children under the age of one who now represent ...
One of the most interesting of the (ridiculously) long list of documents my daughter had to provide in order to work here in France was a letter stating that she would not enter a polygamous marriage. Polygamy is illegal in France, so you might think this pledge is as redundant as pledging not to ...
Charging a $100,000 membership fee for an online dating site could be a great way to profit off men who want to signal their wealth to potential mates. But the profits from the Secret Diamond Club will come from women who don’t realize that the “secret” part of the club is there is almost no chance ...
I don’t know why this still surprises me (particularly since expressions like the one in the title to this post have been floating around for several hundred years), but whenever I tell people about my area of interest they seem to understand at an intuitive level what it is we talk about here at ...
If you were to guess the macroeconomic variable that had the widest impact on sexual behavior over the past fifty years, what would you choose? Personally, I would choose the one that increased the age of marriage, reduced teen pregnancy rates, gave women more control of their relationships, and ...