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Boys don't like girls, boys like postgrad housewives
What does the man with a lot of romantic options want?
Does he want a beautiful young trophy wife? Does he want a high-earning girlboss?
The answer, according to Lyman Stone, is neither. What he wants (according to the data) is a woman around his age, with the same academic qualifications. Men with younger (and indeed, older) wives are the ones earning less money. What rich men want, it seems, is a (cultural, educational) peer.
With earnings is becomes a bit more complicated. As a man's income goes up, so does the income of his wife. But richer men earn a larger proportion of household income, and the women married to these men are the most likely to not work at all.
So what's going on here? The Red Pill explanation of men preferring younger women doesn't seem to fit, since the men with the most options (high earning ones) are more like to choose women the same age. However, these couples also choose housewifery at the highest rate. My interpretation of this is that the more money a man earns, the more secure in their class position the couple can be. Therefore, they can afford to have the wife give up work without losing their place in the class hierarchy.
The bitter professional woman explanation (men are intimidated by my qualifications and high salary) doesn't seem to work either. Sure, wives of rich men are the least likely to work, but those that do work are also the highest earners among women. A more parsimonious explanation seems to be that high earning women want higher earning men, and they (mostly) get them.
High earning men seem to want class peers. A woman's qualifications are a marker for class, and a woman's high salary is a manifestation of her class. Of course, once married, they can afford for her to stay home more easily than poorer families.
The thing that surprises me most is that you don't see richer men marrying younger women, as all of the older-younger pairings I've seen in real life have involved high-earning men. It might be that richer men marry younger, and therefore there is simply less scope for large age gaps. Or it might be that richer men are more sensitive to judgement from their peers, who would disapprove of larger age gaps.
Well. That's who they want on their arm when they're seen in public. Certainly selection bias in terms of what we actually see.
My inherent issue with this is its not differentiating between what they chase as sexual partners vs. what they might actually settle in for a long term relationship.
Red Pill would suggest that a wealthy man can and would keep a soft harem of younger women, discarding them as needed, which isn't really refuted by the data here.
Possible. I'll also throw out that younger women are a little less likely to successfully keep up the right appearances and are probably somewhat more likely to do something that is blatantly embarrassing to you either intentionally or unintentionally.
So even if your peers 'approve' of large age gaps, you're still risking reputational damage if the woman you choose is actually immature.
There's the key word. Marry. Leo DiCaprio has gone through 12 younger women in the last 20 years alone (is he an outlier? Probably, but not by much). No wedding in sight.
Broaden the question to more general 'relationships' and I'd imagine age gaps are more prevalent.
So yeah, is there anything in the data to suggest that rich men wouldn't pump and dump as many young women as they can (Elon sure goes that route) and only marry one that actually matches his personal status more closely?
I'm genuinely not trying to be contrarian, I'm just put off when I see a claim like this, backed up by a narrowly-defined set of data that purports to refute an idea that is making a substantially different claim.
I’d guess actual billionaires (like Hollywood stars, whose indiscretions are more public) have a higher rate of infidelity than average, but do male investment bankers have a higher rate of infidelity than male bartenders, tattoo artists, taxi drivers or nurses? I doubt it. Polling shows that male infidelity stays pretty similar controlling for education and most non-religious class background.
The idea that every rich man who can afford to is secretly fucking hot teens or young women seems like more of a prurient fantasy than anything else. Some do, just like plenty of married cops and truckers fuck hookers. But most? I doubt it.
Question is a bit fraught.
I'd absolutely bet that historically and recently, it was more likely that wealthier men had higher infidelity rates simply because it would be relatively easy for them to find attractive affair partners.
If nothing else, they can afford to pick a high-end escort for a night.
Invert it. Consider that young women are actively pursuing the rich men (if you're on dating apps, this is effectively explicit) and are much, much quicker to put out for them.
On balance, what effect would we expect this to have? Rich guys getting laid a lot, and very few of these women getting wifed up by said rich man. He can wait for the 'ideal' match, hopefully one that isn't so naive as to bang the nearest rich dude without much discretion.
I've talked to death about the lack of actual long-term relationships forming among the current crop of young women, I think the point that's relevant to this discussion is that there's a class of men who have their pick of women, and actually DO get to have it both ways. Bang the nubile ones for fun and then eventually find one worth marrying.
So what these men are marrying isn't quite revealing what they're actually pursuing, sexually.
1% is the general number for American men using escorts or prostitutes in the past year, and the highest estimates are only two and a half percent. It's also negatively correlated with income in general.
Just not a real thing people do at a level where it would impact these numbers.
Yes, we've all recently learned that the multimillionaire CEO of a tech company will risk it all to have an affair with the head of HR at said company.
I'd agree escorts aren't the MODAL case here, for sure.
But for most guys, a night with a decent escort is not likely in the budget, so he's likely to throw money at strippers or somesuch.
Rich guy has that fallback, but is not necessarily going to need it.
I suppose the availability can have an impact on the market even if they aren't used. Like the Marxian theory that the unemployed are the Reserve Army of Labor, driving down wages by fear of competition. And I suppose the same goes for young floozies: my wife sees a 20 year old woman admiring me and knows she has to compete, and chooses to be better? I don't know.
I just don't think it's the case that there's some secret activity that proves that men don't really want the things they are visibly pursuing.
Eh, its the same as how we crave unhealthy junk food but can restrict ourselves to eating the healthier (but still flavorful) options over the long term.
I think guys have their horny brain which will screw almost any living thing, and then the post-coitus clarity brain that knows they need to find someone stable.
Guys have the things they want when they are mostly aiming to get their rocks off, then the things they want when they consider what kind of kids they'll have, who will help raise them, and what type of person would they tolerate sticking around AFTER they've had sex with them.
Rich guys presumably have the same urges, I'm just suggesting they have more options on the table to chase some strange if they can't keep the urges in check.
I don't disagree, but at some level...call me old fashioned, but marrying the rich guy is generally how we define winning for a woman. No one is disputing that rich men can find poor women attractive, but if they aren't marrying them, then it's sort of irrelevant to the outcome of the match.
Saying that rich men are really attracted to something other than what they're marrying is just kind of a misunderstanding of terms in my mind. Like saying that the team that is losing baseball games is better at baseball than the team that is winning baseball games. Or, to mix sports metaphors, it brings to mind the classic Sampaoli quote on possession in soccer:
For a woman trying to net a rich husband, it doesn't really matter if he stares at the big-titted waitress at the bar, it barely matters if he bangs her on occasion. It matters who he marries, who he supports financially, who has the children he raises and supports. Those are the goals, the sex is just passing the ball(s) around.
((That said, when you talk about "soft harems" I think we're mixing up what the data here is about. The granularity on income stops at percentile. The top 1% of income is "only" about $400k/yr. While I suppose, with some cleverness, you could manage to squirrel enough away to spend enough to keep a glamour girl on the side off that, you're not keeping a harem. DiCaprio or Trump, ultra wealthy celebrities, are in another stratosphere from the data on record here.))
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