February 10, 2025

Economix Blog: On Whether Women Can (or Do) Marry Younger Men

In my earlier post on the economics of the viral Princeton Mom letter, I didn’t address another assertion of the writer: the suggestion that women cannot (or at least do not) pair off with younger men.

She wrote:

Here is another truth that you know, but nobody is talking about. As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?

I don’t have data about whether Princeton men, per se, are willing to marry older women, but there are national figures on the age gaps between heterosexual spouses.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2012 Annual Social and Economic Supplement. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2012 Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

According to 2012 Census Bureau data, 85.9 percent of husbands are older than or about the same age as their wives. To break it down further, 52.6 percent of all husbands are at least two years older than their wives (based on their ages at the time of the survey, which could be less than a full 24-month difference).

Another 33.3 percent, a plurality, are within a year of the same age — meaning the wife could be older or the husband could be older, with that slim one-year margin of age difference. Assortative matching at work, once again.

That leaves 14.2 percent of all husbands who are at least two years younger than their wives.

At first blush, the distribution of those age gaps does not seem to have changed much since 1999, the earliest year for which I could find a directly comparable data table. (If you have access to earlier data, please let me know.) In 1999, 12.3 percent of husbands were at least two years younger than their wives.

If norms have changed sharply from then to now, of course, they probably still would not make a big dent in the overall age-gap numbers, since a lot of couples who would have been married before 1999 are still around. Indeed, as we’ve noted before, the annual new-marriage rate has been falling in that time period, meaning that any new preferences that are emerging for newly married couples would show up in a shrinking share of the total married population.

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/on-whether-women-can-or-do-marry-younger-men/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Euro Watch: Data Points to Slow Recovery in Euro Zone

But in an indication of the hurdles left to scale, Spain’s unemployment surged to 26 percent in the fourth quarter, a record high since measurements began in the 1970s, as a prolonged recession and deep spending cuts left almost 6 million people out of work at the end of last year.

The manufacturing survey published by Markit supports European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s assertion that the 17-nation currency union is benefiting from “positive contagion” but still hints at an economic contraction in the first quarter of 2013.

Markit’s Flash Composite Eurozone Purchasing Managers’ Index, which surveys around 5,000 companies and is seen as a good growth indicator, jumped to 48.2 from December’s 47.2, beating expectations for a rise to 47.5.

While the index has now held below the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction in all but one of the last 17 months, Markit said the data suggested conditions in the bloc were improving.

“We shouldn’t get too gloomy about those numbers,” Chris Williamson, a data collator at Markit, said. “There is a turning point that took place towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year so things are picking up. Any downturn is looking likely to end in the first half.”

He added, however, that the manufacturing index was “still consistent” with gross domestic product in the 17-country bloc falling at a quarterly rate of about 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent.

The euro zone economy contracted in the second and third quarters of last year, meeting the technical definition of recession, and the downturn is expected to have deepened in the fourth quarter.

Earlier data from Germany, Europe’s largest economy and the bloc’s growth engine, showed its private sector expanded at its fastest pace in a year.

In neighboring France, data from Markit showed that business activity shrank in January at the fastest pace since the trough of the global financial crisis. The preliminary composite purchasing managers’ index, covering activity in the services and manufacturing sectors combined, came out at 42.7 for the month, slumping from 44.6 in December.

Spain’s unemployment rate rose to 26 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, or 5.97 million people, the National Statistics Institute said on Thursday, up from 25 percent in the previous quarter and more than double the European Union average.

“We haven’t seen the bottom yet and employment will continue falling in the first quarter,” José Luis Martínez, a strategist with Citigroup, said.

Spain sank into its second recession since 2009 at the end of 2011 after a burst housing bubble left millions of low-skilled laborers out of work and sliding private and business sentiment gutted consumer spending and imports.

Efforts by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government to control one of the euro zone’s largest deficits through billions of euros of spending cuts and tax increases have fueled general malaise, further hampering demand.

Still, Mr. Draghi of the E.C.B. is taking an optimistic view, declaring earlier this month that the euro zone economy would recover later in 2013 and that there was now a “positive contagion” effect in play.

Europe’s top central banker cited falling bond yields, rising stock markets and historically low volatility as evidence for this, causing several forecasters to ditch expectations for an imminent cut in euro zone interest rates.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/business/global/daily-euro-zone-watch.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Europe Gives Greece Two More Years for Budget Cuts

But the ministers put off until Nov. 20 any decision to give Greece a long-delayed payment worth $40 billion so international officials and national parliaments could continue to assess the steps that the government in Athens had agreed to make as a condition of two bailout packages totaling 240 billion euros, or $305 billion.

In a sign that fixing the Greek economy and the euro would continue to be a rancorous process even after three years of continuous crisis, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, and Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, publicly disagreed on how long to give Greece to make its debts sustainable into the next decade.

Mr. Juncker told reporters at a late-night news conference that Greece should now be given until 2022 to cut its debt to 120 percent of its gross domestic product. But Ms. Lagarde immediately met that assertion with incredulity, saying there was an urgent need to take steps sooner to ensure the country’s high external financing needs would be viable in the future.

“The appropriate timetable is 120 percent by 2020,” said Ms. Lagarde, who shook her head and rolled her eyes at Mr. Juncker’s comments. “We clearly have different views,” she said, adding that keeping to that goal was vital “so that that country can be back on its feet and reaccess the private market in due course.”

Speaking later in the news conference, Mr. Juncker insisted that his comment “was not a joke.”

Ms. Lagarde also was more cautious in her praise of progress made by the Greek authorities than other euro area officials, including Mr. Juncker.

“From the I.M.F.’s point of view, it’s critical that all chapters of the book be not only opened but closed satisfactorily — that means the fiscal commitments, the structural reforms, the financing and the debt sustainability analysis, which we will clearly come back to with additional work to be done in coming days,” Ms. Lagarde said.

Last week, Greece’s shaky coalition won a tight vote on a package of austerity measures and fiscal overhauls totaling 17 billion euros for the next four years.

Then, early on Monday, the Greek government pushed through Parliament a tough budget for 2013 that calls for cuts totaling 9.4 billion euros, or $12 billion, to salaries, pensions and social benefits, and that raised the retirement age to 67 from 65 and imposed higher taxes.

Those steps were a sign that “words have been backed by deeds,” Olli Rehn, the E.U. commissioner for economic and monetary union, told the same news conference.

“It is time to debunk the perception that no progress has been made,” said Mr. Rehn, referring to the structural reforms made by Greece. “This perception is damaging, it is unfair, and it is simply wrong.” Mr. Rehn gave as examples the way Greece had reformed disbursement of medicines and adjusted its pension system.

Failure to disburse the pending loan tranche to Greece could result in a chaotic exit from the euro and threaten the currency.

But obstacles to releasing that money remain. Even when ministers do give the green light for that disbursement, the decision still is subject to approval by a number of national parliaments.

Mr. Juncker said checking that those parliamentary approvals had been made could require finance ministers to hold a teleconference or meet in person at the end of the month in addition to their Nov. 20 meeting.

“Seriously, thoroughness is a must and before we decide, Germany’s Bundestag has to be involved, just like in other countries,” Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance official, said earlier on Monday.

In Greece, promised reforms and budget cuts went off track in recent months, partly as a result of holding two elections in three months earlier this year. That left the government in Athens seeking more time to make reforms.

Yet relaxing the terms of agreement with Greece will cost more money for lenders and put leaders of big creditors like Germany in an awkward position with voters who have grown tired of bailing out others.

A draft copy of a report by the troika — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — that was circulating at the meeting said the bill for allowing Greece the additional time would be 32.6 billion euros.

Addressing lawmakers before the vote on the Greek budget, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said the new cuts would be the last and he appealed to the troika to support his country.

“Greece has done its part,” Mr. Samaras said. “Now it’s the turn of the lenders.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/global/europe-gives-greece-two-more-years-for-budget-cuts.html?partner=rss&emc=rss