Dollars and Sex summary

You might think that the introduction of safe and reliable contraceptives such as birth control pills would reduce pregnancies. However, premarital birth rates have actually increased over the years.

This might sound contradictory, but remember that as contraceptives improved, the potential financial and social risks surrounding premarital sex dramatically decreased, leading to more active sex lives.

If you didn’t get lucky in college, don’t feel too bad. After all, the marketplace may not have been in your favor.

That’s right, when we look at sexual activity on college campuses, we can clearly see the laws of supply and demand in action. Unsurprisingly enough, heterosexual male students stand a better chance of having sex before graduation if they attend a college with a higher female population.

If you’ve had any experience with online dating, you know that these sites can have thousands of active members, and that it’s impossible to find the time to inspect every single profile. So, instead of scrolling for all eternity, you rely on the questions the site asks. You check a few boxes about your likes and dislikes, and you hope for the best.

However, the extremely broad questions these dating sites ask often make the market ridiculously thin – drastically reducing the likelihood of your finding your ideal partner.

Have you ever wondered why people get married? It’s a fair question. And, in truth, the answer likely has more to do with economics than romance.

A household isn’t unlike a business with demands that need to be met. Like business partners, partners in marriage are, ideally, two people with complementary skills – skills that allow them to satisfy household demands better than either partner would alone.

Have you ever wondered why some societies accept polygamous marriages? Though the idea of a man taking multiple wives might seem strange to you, there are, in some countries, clear reasons to condone the practice – specifically, economic reasons.

From an economic standpoint, it makes good sense that a woman would prefer becoming the second or third wife of a wealthy man than the first and only wife of a poor man. While being an additional wife might come at a “cost,” that cost is nonetheless outweighed by the benefits.

Most of us probably think that love is the glue that keeps most marriages together. But money and education play big roles as well.

According to a recent study conducted by economics professors Philip Oreopoulos and Kjell Salvanes, those with a postgraduate degree only have a 3-percent chance of getting divorced, while those with a high school diploma have a 16-percent chance.