Transcript

00:00:00going back to the the sort of inequality thing what is the state of the gender pay gap in big
00:00:04cities now because i saw some data been for a while it was 29 that women were out earning
00:00:09men by about a thousand pounds i think now it's up to 31 32 does anyone know this i don't know
00:00:14the exact numbers but i do know that in a lot of cities it's reversed and that um young women are
00:00:19earning more than young men yeah major uh metro areas in the u.s so new york dc boston la in
00:00:26seattle as well i don't know the state of austin but it wouldn't surprise me if austin showed the
00:00:30the same pattern as well for under 30s yeah yeah i think it's squeaking into the 31 32s now
00:00:37and that's what's going to be really interesting like yeah maybe you're right and we've managed to
00:00:44preference for resourceful partners has reduced as women have gotten richer there was some studies a
00:00:49little while ago vincent harinam um put this one out in his paper from like well it's an article from
00:00:55like six years ago that suggested that very high-powered career women had an increased
00:01:01preference for more high-powered men so ambitious people desire more ambitious partners yeah uh
00:01:07specifically women to men or the uh effect didn't reverse uh but it seems that what you're suggesting
00:01:13here maybe for the middle bit of the bell curve perhaps when you get to the top 10 of hyper ambitious
00:01:21people they that somehow flips because they have they've warped so much of their sense of self-worth
00:01:26around ambition that inevitably it's going to bleed into what they find sexually attractive to or the
00:01:31desirable in a partner or maybe that there's such an outlier that they breach some threshold of being
00:01:36able to talk to the normies about what they're going to you know what i mean all of these things like
00:01:40an elite athlete would would probably be good if their partner at least understands how the game of
00:01:45american football is played yeah right i think i think you can take our the gender economic
00:01:51inequality findings of ours to the bank because they're consistent with the cross-cultural literature
00:01:55the income finding is very interesting but it's matched with the cross-sectional literature on
00:02:02individuals i don't know what any of this means okay so the it is true that higher income women uh in so in our
00:02:11experiment um there was a broad uh like they they were less interested in mating up um economically
00:02:18so higher income women less interest in mating up um
00:02:24but uh in it's true also that in the wild higher income women tend to still
00:02:30have strong preferences resources yeah so that's what you see in the real world is
00:02:35like uh high achieving highly educated high income women tend to marry men who are still doing at least as
00:02:40well as they are so there's a couple caveats on that broad pattern um one thing that's interesting
00:02:47that comes from the social rule theorists is that they say well richer women are qualitatively different
00:02:52from poorer women in that they they are they are different in lots of ways and so to say oh they're
00:02:58different in this way it's not really controlled that's part of the reason we did an experiment by the
00:03:02way um but then also richer women have stronger mate preferences in general like in koryoma's research
00:03:10and lose research they want hotter guys too and and in fact things going on there well i mean
00:03:19there's an old david buzz study that literally said like attractive women want it all yeah that was the
00:03:24time but rich women rich women also want it all and i think that part of it is that if you're rich and
00:03:28attractive you're fucked yeah people who are good at people who are good at getting stuff probably are
00:03:32confident in their ability to get stuff um people who are you know high achieving i think that it's
00:03:37very like my older sister is a successful banker if she has a preference for a guy who's doing well
00:03:43economically that's like that's a very realistic preference whereas for a woman who's working at a gas
00:03:48station that's a very unrealistic and then also when you look at the ratios of preference as
00:03:54opposed to just the absolute preference i do have to kind of tip my hat to the social role people a
00:03:59little bit on that where it's like it does seem that even though richer women have a stronger mate
00:04:03preference for resources they have a lower relative mate preference for resources um in lose data for
00:04:10example so it's like plain english it's like i want so it's like um you talk to i'll put it in a kind of
00:04:15uh uh imaginary example it's like you talk to a poor woman exemplary poor woman and she says you
00:04:21know i kind of want a rich guy and i kind of want a hot guy and then you talk to an exemplary rich
00:04:26woman and it's like i really want a rich guy and you say oh it doesn't match the thing but then they
00:04:30say but i really really want a hot guy and i also really want a guy who's going to take care of the
00:04:35kids and i also want a guy who shares my same political beliefs and it's like oh man so they just
00:04:39have higher standards across the board and as a relative preference it seems to decline also i would
00:04:44say that there's the that sounds like it increases not declines so it increases absolutely but then
00:04:49maybe decreases relatively so it's like the rank ordering yeah so it's like if i they're they're
00:04:55they're maybe able to relax that preference relative relative to other preferences but not
00:04:59relative to their own level yeah exactly it doesn't drop away though it doesn't drop it doesn't drop
00:05:05away i think they used to predict that it would then it's just there because women are poor there's a
00:05:08household that we need to hit yeah and we can portion this out however we want between the two
00:05:13different yeah indeed in as much as there's a winner yeah in as much as there's a winner on that
00:05:18bickering between the evo psychs and those and the social psychologists the evo psychs won that one
00:05:23because it was pretty clearly predicted like hey richer women are going to have a reduced
00:05:27mate preference for resources and then they tested it in a bunch of different ways and it didn't
00:05:32but there is some caveats what's fascinating here is it's just people with high
00:05:34standards have high standards yeah the high standards that got them to be valedictorian
00:05:39the high standards that got them to get a high-powered degree and then a good career and then
00:05:42to work at it to get promotion and to make it to c-suite or become partner and then when it came to
00:05:47choosing a partner they have high standards high standards high standards it's like just kind of
00:05:54it's the sort of thing that your parents would understand they have high standards for
00:05:57themselves and their own uh for everything accomplishments then also for partners you see this
00:06:01with uh the research on perfectionism that perfectionists how it comes in at least two
00:06:07broad buckets but maybe three i think actually uh the first one is perfectionism around your own
00:06:12behavior and your own standards but the other is perfectionism for the people around you's behavior
00:06:16and standards too this is one of the problems that perfectionists have built themselves into a more
00:06:22perfect life it's not one-to-one might actually be net negative but you have pushed yourself
00:06:27unreasonably to raise your standard of living and then as you become more of an outlier in terms of your
00:06:33perfectionism in your own life you look for more perfectionism from a higher baseline which is your
00:06:38new one in the people around you and that happens more on average from people that are perfectionists yeah
00:06:44interesting another thing i'll say on that is that the there is also the caveat of the i mean i actually
00:06:51really would love to hear steve's thoughts on revealed preferences state adversary if we can if we can gently
00:06:55steer the conversation if i can ask the captain of the ship i've actually wanted to hear his opinion
00:07:02but there is the uh there is the there is a oh this is going to be terrible in my head but
00:07:08there is the um revealed element where it's like if you look at women now today and this is from the
00:07:15institute of family studies where they it's kind of it's a kind of a way of visualizing the data more
00:07:19than anything but they bucketed uh different income brackets yeah and in the top 20 of women like the
00:07:26top quintile uh they are already on average are dating down very slightly economically two quintiles
00:07:32of men are doing the same thing yeah they're dating up so there's this really weird kind of thing there
00:07:38where it's like um you can say in the abstract and and i'm teeing you up for some thoughts on stated
00:07:44versus revealed but you can say in the abstract oh richer women they have a stronger mate preference to
00:07:48made up let's say but then you see what they're doing and it's like oh they're less likely to do
00:07:52it so it's like what is what does stronger mean in that context but they don't necessarily the fact
00:07:56that they um on average uh uh going with somebody who's somewhat earning somewhat less than them
00:08:03isn't necessarily because that's what they prefer it's what they have what's available there's not
00:08:07at those kind of echelons there's just not much available at all tall girl problem tall girl problem
00:08:12yeah exactly okay so if there's a shortage of tall men then you'll settle for a guy who's not yeah
00:08:17like tall women are probably also less likely to yeah exactly not because they prefer shorter men so
00:08:22i don't think that's revealing a preference necessarily the supplement industry is full of
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Key Takeaway

Young women in major U.S. cities outearn young men under 30, and high-income women maintain rigorous mate standards across multiple categories despite facing a limited pool of equally earning male partners.

Highlights

  • Young women in major U.S. metro areas including New York, DC, Boston, LA, and Seattle earn more than young men under the age of 30.

  • High-achieving, high-income women maintain higher mate standards across multiple dimensions, seeking partners who are financially stable, attractive, and involved in domestic or political spheres.

  • Data from the Institute of Family Studies indicates that women in the top 20 income quintile date men earning less by an average of two quintiles due to a shortage of high-earning male peers.

  • The tendency of high-achieving individuals to maintain strict standards in personal accomplishments extends directly into their selection of romantic partners.

Timeline

Gender earnings reversal in major cities

  • Young women outearn young men by 31 to 32 percent in major U.S. metropolitan areas for individuals under 30.
  • Major metro locations exhibiting this pattern include New York, DC, Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle.
  • High-powered career women sometimes display an increased preference for equally ambitious partners.

Economic data demonstrates that young women in urban centers surpass men in earnings. This shift influences dating dynamics, where ambition and career drive overlap with sexual and romantic attraction among high achievers.

Mate preferences among high-income women

  • Higher-income women exhibit broader mate preferences, desiring financial security, physical attractiveness, and shared political beliefs simultaneously.
  • Perfectionistic traits in personal achievements correlate with heightened standards for the behavior and status of surrounding people.
  • Evolutionary psychology models accurately predict that high-earning women retain strong mate preferences rather than abandoning them.

Analysis of mate selection shows that affluent women possess high standards across the board rather than trading off wealth for other traits. Perfectionism in personal life bleeds into partner selection, raising the baseline expectations for a companion.

Stated preferences versus revealed behavior

  • Top quintile women frequently date men earning less because of a structural shortage of high-earning male peers at that economic echelon.
  • The tendency to date down economically mirrors the tall girl problem, where scarcity dictates settling for available options rather than shifting intrinsic preferences.

A divergence exists between stated preferences and revealed behavior in dating markets. While wealthy women express a desire for high-earning partners, data from the Institute of Family Studies reveals they often date men in lower income brackets simply due to demographic availability at the top tiers.

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