Search and matching models of marriage (with emphasis on search or on matching)

Often when economic theorists (particularly matching theorists) speak of "marriage" we don't mean the real thing, we mean a metaphor embodied in a simple one-to-one model of matching. But marriage is a very real thing, and matching models of various sorts are used to study it.  Here's a survey from the Annual Review of Economics, by one of the leaders of this literature.

The Theory and Empirics of the Marriage Market by  Pierre-André Chiappori

"the economic analysis of the marriage will aim at answering two sets of questions: (a) Who marries whom? and (b) How are the benefits distributed between spouses? Mostly, these questions have been analyzed using either of two different frameworks: frictionless matching theory and search models. The basic distinction between the two is related to the emphasis that is put (or not) on frictions in the description of the market. In search models, frictions are paramount. Typically, each individual sequentially and randomly meets one person of the opposite gender; after such a meeting, both individuals must decide whether to settle for the current mate or continue searching. The latter option involves various costs, from discounting to the risk of never finding a better partner. If both individuals agree to engage in a relationship (which can be marriage or, in some models, cohabitation), then a negotiation begins on the way the surplus is shared.

"Matching models, on the contrary, assume a frictionless environment. In the matching process, each woman (say) is assumed to have free access to the pool of all potential men, with perfect knowledge of the characteristics of each of them—and vice versa. In other words, matching models disregard the cost of acquiring information about potential matches as well as the role of meeting technologies of all sorts (from social media to head hunters and from dating sites to pure luck).
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I haven't absorbed the whole paper yet, but the introduction reminded me of the plurality of approaches to studying search and matching (not just restricted to the study of marriage). Chiappori shares the view that the big difference between search models and matching models is that matching models are "frictionless," they assume away all the search frictions that are the subject of search models. 

Search models, on the other hand, concentrate on search effort, and take the actual matching technology to be random meetings. (To my mind, that's vastly different from taking account of the actual technology of matching, which is central to the market design literature on matching.)

The 2010 Nobel prize in Economics went to Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides, the founders of the search and matching macro literature "for their analysis of markets with search frictions." I recall that Dale Mortensen expressed the view that one of their big contributions was to notice that matching could be regarded as a "black box," rather than being studied explicitly, i.e. that actual matching didn't need to be incorporated in the model. Here's a 2001 paper from the JEL that discusses that:

Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function
Barbara Petrongolo and Christopher A. Pissarides
Journal of Economic Literature Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), pp. 390-431

" The matching function summarizes a  trading technology between agents who  place advertisements, read newspapers and  magazines, go to employment agencies,  and mobilize local networks that eventually bring them together into productive matches. The key idea is that this  complicated exchange process is summarized by a well-behaved function that  gives the number of jobs formed at any  moment in time in terms of the number  of workers looking for jobs, the number  of firms looking for workers, and a  small number of other variables.

" The matching function is a modeling  device that occupies the same place in  the macroeconomist's tool kit as other  aggregate functions, such as the production function and the demand for money  function."
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That work, which is focused on search and which treats matching as a black box, provides some big insights. For example, if search is costly but the benefits of matching are shared equally by the one who searches and the one who is found, then there can be free riding in the form of too little search, and hence unemployment by qualified job seekers at the same time that there are unfilled positions, and unsold houses at the same time as there are people who would actually like to buy them.

But models of matching via aggregate matching functions or via random matching are nowhere near the level of detail that allows the kind of micro-micro economics that market designers practice in analyzing marketplaces or in trying to design them. I'm mostly talking about markets that resemble labor markets more than marriage, but dating sites are marketplaces designed for something related to marriage, and there are some explicitly matrimonial sites. Much of what makes one dating site different from another is how they deal with congestion and other frictions.

A not-atypical market design project begins with an analysis of matching in an existing system,  focused on precisely the details of how matching occurs. A next step is that designers sometimes take responsibility for redesigning those details, or aspects of them, to reduce frictions in marketplaces e.g. for labor, schools,  kidneys, MBA courses, financial exchanges, dating sites themselves, etc.

I think there has been too little intersection between those who study search with random matching and those who study matching without explicitly modeling the costs of search. (That isn't to say that there aren't people working and making progress in that intersection.)  Possibly one barrier is a misunderstanding between these two groups of what the models are good for.

Regretting the dating market, in the Atlantic

In the Atlantic, the authors regret that marriages are no longer made in heaven, but are becoming a market...

The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse
The old but newly popular notion that one’s love life can be analyzed like an economy is flawed—and it’s ruining romance. by ASHLEY FETTERS and KAITLYN TIFFANY

Many people are quoted, most briefly and to the effect that the marriage market is a new and bad phenomenon.

"The application of the supply-and-demand concept, Weigel said, may have come into the picture in the late 19th century, when American cities were exploding in population. “There were probably, like, five people your age in [your hometown],” she told me. “Then you move to the city because you need to make more money and help support your family, and you’d see hundreds of people every day.” When there are bigger numbers of potential partners in play, she said, it’s much more likely that people will begin to think about dating in terms of probabilities and odds."

I seem to have been the only one who didn't have a negative quote about markets (in an interview that if I recall correctly took place on Valentine's day):

"The Stanford economist Alvin Roth has argued that Tinder is, like the New York Stock Exchange, a “thick” market where lots of people are trying to complete transactions, and that the main problem with dating apps is simply congestion. To him, the idea of a dating market is not new at all. “Have you ever read any of the novels of Jane Austen?” he asked. “Pride and Prejudice is a very market-oriented novel. Balls were the internet of the day. You went and showed yourself off.”

Proposal to decriminalize polygamy in Utah

Marriage is special, a protected transaction in the U.S. and elsewhere, and that has led to odd situations as social mores change.  Same sex marriage is now legal in every U.S. state, but long before that happened, laws against homosexual sex had already been repealed. So same sex couples were able to live peacefully together before they could marry.*

In much the same way, it is not a crime in most places for unmarried people to live together, and start families.  The phrase 'polyamory' is sometimes applied to romantic relations among multiple adults.  But marriage, no longer defined as a relation between one man and one woman, is still defined as a relation between two people (but now they can also be of the same sex).  That "two-ness" may be starting to change too.

The WSJ has the story:

Utah Lawmakers Seek to Decriminalize Polygamy
Sponsor says bill will help ‘otherwise law-abiding consenting adults who practice polygamy’
By Talal Ansari

"Utah could decriminalize polygamy for the first time in 85 years.

"Lawmakers in the state House are considering legislation that would reclassify bigamy as an infraction in certain circumstances. The Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed the bill earlier this week.

"More than 60% of Utah’s population belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, colloquially known as the Mormon Church, which practiced polygamy early in its history but banned it more than a century ago.

"Under current state law, bigamy is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Bigamy is a legal term, defined as marrying someone while being legally married to another person.
...
"Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes has said his office only prosecutes bigamy crimes “against those who induce marriage under false pretenses or if there is a collateral malfeasance.”

"Sen. Henderson has said her bill would essentially codify the attorney general’s prevailing practices into law.
...
"Polygamy was outlawed in the U.S. in the 1880s. The practice was banned by the Mormon Church in 1890, as Utah sought statehood. Utah wouldn’t become a state until 1896, under the condition that it explicitly ban polygamy in its constitution.


"Since then, the state and the Mormon Church have taken a hard stance against polygamy, with the latter excommunicating its members for engaging in plural marriage.

"In 1935, the state criminalized bigamy. Those moves pushed polygamists to the fringes of society and in geographic isolation.

"The law has been challenged over the years. In 2013, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups declared unconstitutional a key portion of Utah’s polygamy law after it was challenged by stars of the reality-television show “Sister Wives.” An appeals court later dismissed that decision and the Supreme Court decided not to hear the appeal.

"According to a Gallup poll, acceptance of polygamy appears to be increasing in the U.S. In 2018, 18% of Americans believed marrying more than one person was morally acceptable. In 2003, 7% of those asked took the same stance."
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In common usage, I think "bigamy" refers to one person having two spouses (often a man with two wives), but it sounds as if, used as a legal term in Utah, bigamy includes what used to be called polygamy,  the situation of having more than one spouse at the same time. The usual form of polygamy is polygyny, when a man has more that one wife. A less usual form of polygamy is polyandry, when a woman has more than one husband.

All these terms arose when marriage, even multiple marriage, was thought of as between men and women.  We may need new terms for plural marriage now that we recognize same sex marriages.  For example, in a plural marriage of the future, will all the members be married to each other?

This would make legalizing plural marriage potentially more difficult, in terms of defining the legal status of all the spouses, than was legalizing same sex marriage.  In the case of same sex marriage, all the customary rights and obligations of traditional marriage in each state could be extended to same sex couples by a judicial order.  But, e.g. how does divorce work in a plural marriage--is it pairwise, or is it more like dissolving a partnership, or resigning from a partnership?  Can some parts of the marriage persist while other parts are dissolved?

This suggests to me that it may be some time before we see new, plural forms of marriage enshrined in law.  But I wouldn't bet the farm against it in the long term.

(In the meantime, I think we can say that if you support plural marriage, that's big o' you.)
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*In a geographically related story, the Salt Lake Tribune reported last week
BYU students celebrate as school removes ‘Homosexual Behavior’ section from its online Honor Code

Matching for platonic co-parenting: "like a divorce, without the wedding or the arguments."

The WSJ has the story, about two web sites that are trying to pioneer matching for people who want to conceive a child who will have two involved parents, who won't be married to each other:

Co-Parenting Sites Skip Love and Marriage, Go Right to the Baby Carriage
A new kind of online service matches people who want to have children, but not necessarily romance 
By Julie Jargon

"When Jenica Andersen felt the tug for a second child at age 37, the single mom weighed her options: wait until she meets Mr. Right or choose a sperm donor and go it alone.

"The first option didn’t look promising. The idea of a sperm donor wasn’t appealing, either, because she wanted her child to have an active father, just like her 4-year-old son has. After doing some research, Ms. Andersen discovered another option: subscription-based websites such as PollenTree.com and Modamily that match would-be parents who want to share custody of a child without any romantic expectations. It’s a lot like a divorce, without the wedding or the arguments."
...
"Given the prominence in today’s society of both single parenthood and online dating, this digital approach could be seen as a natural progression. It could also be considered shocking or even, as some have called it, an affront to marriage.
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Here's Pollentree.com: https://www.pollentree.com/, which also offers to match prospective moms with sperm donors.

And here's Modafamily: https://modamily.com/, which speaks of romantic, co-parenting, or known-donor relationships.

Divorce as a repugnant transaction

A recent obituary reminds me that divorce used to be a repugnant transaction, to which there were barriers even when both partners in a marriage were eager to end it on agreed upon terms.  It was a repugnant transaction because of the way we regard marriage as a protected transaction.

Jerome Wilson, Key in Revamping New York Divorce Law, Dies at 88
As a legislator in 1966, he led a commission that pushed to broaden the legal grounds for divorce. New York had been the last state to recognize only adultery.

"Jerome L. Wilson, a former Democratic state senator from Manhattan who helped liberalize a rigorous 18th-century law that had left New York as the sole state that required a spouse to prove adultery as the only legal ground for divorce, died on Friday
...
"The amended act, which took effect on Sept. 1, 1967, added four other grounds for divorce: cruel treatment, abandonment for two years, the sentencing of a spouse to prison for five years or more and a couple’s living voluntarily apart for at least two years.
...
"In the second year after the law went into effect, the number of divorces granted in New York ballooned to 18,000 in all five categories, compared with 4,000 granted only for adultery during the last year that the old law was in effect.

"Supporters of the changes said the new law also reduced instances of perjury (because so many estranged spouses had to lie about allegations of adultery) and end runs by wealthier couples who could afford to fly to Mexico or Nevada and remain there for two weeks to qualify for a divorce.
...
"Mr. Wilson’s first marriage, in 1957 to Frances Roberts, ended in divorce."

Inter-caste marriage as a repugnant transaction in India: a hired hitman and a murdered groom

In the U.S. we've had long periods where the future of inter-racial and same-sex marriages were in doubt. In India, inter-caste marriage can still be dangerous.

Here's a story from the Washington Post, about a mixed-caste marriage, a hired hitman, and a murdered groom...

A young Indian couple married for love. Then the bride’s father hired assassins.
By Joanna Slater

"Hundreds of people attended the festivities on Aug. 17, 2018, but Amrutha’s parents were notably absent. Rao, her father, had already begun to plot Pranay’s murder, court documents say. The month before, he agreed to pay $150,000 to have his son-in-law killed, using a local political leader as an intermediary. Rao, 57, passed along a photo of the pair from their reception invitation to make it easier for the killers to identify Pranay, the documents allege."

Coupling up with the help of the internet

My colleague Michael Rosenfeld, in Stanford's sociology department, has been studying how married couples first met, over time, with particular attention to the internet.  Those of you reading this on a stone tablet or parchment scroll may be surprised to hear that the internet is playing an ever-bigger role. But everyone might be surprised at how much bigger, how quickly.

The first figure below comes from a 2012 paper (with survey data through 2009),
Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary
by Michael J. Rosenfeld and Reuben J. Thomas, American Sociological Review 77(4): 523-547.

The red line records the percentage of couples who met online, and it was already the dominant method for same-sex respondents to report meeting, while for heterosexual couples it was surpassed only by meeting through friends (and church and primary or secondary school matches had almost dropped out of the picture, while bars were still making a good showing...)

An unpublished (but media-covered) paper brings the figure up to date to 2017, with the red line now approaching 40% for heterosexual couples, and friends (the blue line) continuing their decline.

Research Note:  Disintermediating your friends 
Michael Rosenfeld,  Reuben J. Thomas, Sonia Hausen,
 Draft date: July 15, 2019
Forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Repugnance watch: romantic relationships between faculty and graduate students

Forty plus years ago, I met and married my wife when I was an assistant professor and she was a graduate student in another department. Since then I've paid attention to changes in norms that might have made our relationship illicit, such as this recent change of policies at Princeton.

Princeton updates its policy regarding sexual and romantic relationships between faculty and graduate students
by the Office of Communications
"Princeton University has strengthened its policy regarding sexual and romantic relationships between faculty and graduate students.

"During the Faculty Meeting on Monday, April 1, faculty voted to approve a policy that prohibits all faculty from initiating or engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with graduate students. Previously, faculty were prohibited only from initiating or engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with graduate students over whom they had advising, instruction or supervisory responsibilities. The new policy includes exemptions for pre-existing relationships.

...

"Existing University policy already prohibits all romantic or sexual relationships between faculty and undergraduates.

“It is important to note that this prohibition, and therefore any disciplinary consequences, fall entirely on the faculty. That is, this policy change will not result in any disciplinary consequences for graduate students,” Dean of the Graduate School Sarah-Jane Leslie said in a statement emailed to graduate students.
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Here is the relevant paragraph from
Rules and Procedures of the Faculty of Princeton University and Other Provisions of Concern to the Faculty
As of 2019-04-03

"1. Prohibition of Consensual Relations with Students: Faculty members shall not initiate or engage in romantic or sexual behavior with undergraduate or graduate students. This prohibition encompasses both enrolled and prospective students, and includes students from other institutions who come to Princeton for pre-baccalaureate, post-baccalaureate, visiting, summer, or other programs or courses of study. For purposes of this policy, faculty members include members of the University community whose primary appointment is one of the following: tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty, nstructors, all ranks of lecturers, and visiting faculty. "

Matching story for Valentine's day--BBC

Valentine's Day sparks a demand not just for love, but also for stories about marriage as a matching market.  This year I was among those interviewed by the BBC.  Below are two links:  you can listen to the interviews, or read a summary.

First, the interviews: They go for 18 minutes, and are easy listening.  I'm interviewed third, beginning just before minute 10 and going to about minute 14.   (I didn't see a way to embed it) :

Rational Partner Choice: "Should your head trump your heart when seeking lifelong love? We ask an economist, a romantic novelist and a hyper-rationalist businessman this Valentine's Day challenge."

(There actually are 4 interviews, the fourth is with the wife of the businessman, Ed Conard: they've been happily married for 20 years.)
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The written summary has me as the middle of three views on the subject (the headline below reflects the first of the views they considered, with marriage modeled as an optimal stopping problem).

Forget love: This is how to find your perfect partner  By Justin Rowlatt

Here's what they say about their conversation with me:

"Mr Conard's approach to choosing a wife is a well-established method for buying things like a new place to live but, says Nobel Prize winning economist Alvin Roth, spouses aren't like houses: marriage is a market without prices.
...
"He agrees that it is important to meet quite a few possible partners before you take the plunge - "don't marry the first person you meet", he warns.

"You've also got to have realistic expectations: "the first thing a matrimonial agency has to do is persuade clients they aren't a 10."

"But, he says, you can do too much calibrating and evaluating. Choosing a partner is a two-way thing: it is only when you are serious about marriage that potential partners will take you seriously.

"Part of being well matched is the history you share and this starts when you first meet", Prof Roth says, "so investing in that history improves the quality of that match."
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And here are my Valentine's Day blog posts to date.

Child marriage in the United States

The Washington Post has the story:

"Between 2000 and 2010, an estimated 248,000 children were married, most of whom were girls, some as young as 12, wedding men. Now, under pressure from advocates and amid a nationwide reckoning over gender equality and sexual misconduct, states have begun ending exceptions that have allowed marriages for people younger than 18, the minimum age in most states. Texas last year banned it, except for emancipated minors. Kentucky outlawed it, except for 17-year-olds with parental and judicial approval. Maryland considered increasing the minimum marrying age from 15, but its bill failed to pass in April. Then in May, Delaware abolished the practice under every circumstance, and New Jersey did the same in June. Pennsylvania, which may vote to eliminate all loopholes this autumn, could be next."

Child marriage in the U.S., and in India

Is 13 too young to marry?  If pregnant??

Not yet in Kentucky.
Vote on bill to outlaw child marriage in Kentucky delayed after opposition from conservative Family Foundation

"A bill outlawing child marriage in Kentucky had been expected to receive a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but that vote has been delayed due to last-minute opposition by the conservative Family Foundation of Kentucky, according to the bill’s lead sponsor.

"Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, filed Senate Bill 48 on the first day of this year’s session of the Kentucky General Assembly, which would prohibit anyone under the age of 17 from marrying and only allow 17-year-olds to marry with a judge’s approval.

"Under the current law in Kentucky, 16 and 17-year-olds can marry with their parents’ permission, and a girl of any age under 16 can marry as long as they are pregnant and marrying the expectant father. Likewise, a boy of any age can marry a woman that he impregnates under the current law.

"Adams filed the bill after media reports detailing how Kentucky has the third-highest rate of child marriage in the country — with more than 10,000 children married from 2000 to 2015"
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And from Tennessee
Child marriage in Tennessee: Lawmakers take action to close legal loophole

"Two Democratic lawmakers have introduced bills to prevent marriages in Tennessee where a party is under 18 years of age, after a national nonprofit cited three cases in the state where 10-year-old girls were married to adult men.

"Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, who is sponsoring the legislation with Rep. Darren Jernigan, D-Old Hickory, said at a press conference Monday that while many Tennesseans believe the minimum age to marry is 18, a loophole in state law actually allows a judge to waive the age requirement and does not state a minimum age.

"The State Department views child marriage in other countries as a human rights abuse, yet it’s something that happens with frequency in Tennessee and across the country," Yarbro said"
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And India: Uphill Battle Against Child Marriage Is Being Won in India, for Now
"Data released by Unicef on Tuesday found that a girl’s risk of marrying before her 18th birthday in South Asia fell by more than a third in the last decade, from nearly 50 percent to about 30 percent, in large part because of progress in India.

Child marriage here is finely threaded with other practices, including the exchange of a dowry from the bride’s family to the groom, and sometimes with sex trafficking, making it difficult to tackle any one issue without addressing others. Social workers said there are no easy solutions.

...

"Though India’s numbers are promising, a recent analysis of census data highlighted another disturbing finding. In pockets of India, incidents of child marriage are decreasing in rural areas, but increasing in urban settings.

Researchers involved with the study say it is unclear what is causing that phenomenon. One hypothesis is that an uptick in migration from villages to cities could mean that these weddings have simply been redistributed."

Algorithms for Valentines Day, in the WSJ (update: and elsewhere)

The "Numbers" column in the Wall Street Journal salutes Valentines Day by discussing the deferred acceptance algorithm, and mentioning some of its applications.
You May Now Kiss the Algorithm
A mathematical solution ensures no one is paired with an unacceptable mate
by Jo Craven McGinty

It opens with this encouraging line about stable matching:
"Sorry, love birds. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get."

If you can't read the rest at the above link, try the link at Ms. McGinty's twitter account (or maybe it will even work from here:  #TheNumbers https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-may-now-kiss-the-algorithm-1518184800 … via @WSJ).

One thing not emphasized in the column is that the man-optimal stable matching and the woman-optimal stable matching are very often the same or nearly so.
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Update: even the Nobel foundation can't resist the Valentine's Day connection. Here's their facebook post

Nobel Prize

18 hrs · 

#ValentinesDay. Would you let an economist set you up on a date?  which links to

How a matchmaking algorithm saved lives

Long before dating sites, a pair of economists delved into the question of matchmaking, and hit upon a formula with applications far beyond romance.

Internet dating while Muslim

The Guardian has the story:
SingleMuslim.com: how the Yorkshire dating site transformed Muslim romance
It is one of the biggest dating sites in the world and after 17 years, it has has led to over 50,000 marriages.

"The UK site boasts nearly a million UK active users and the company is expanding internationally. (Traffic analysis suggests there are about 1.4m page views per month).Because it is in effect a marriage site rather than a dating site, it also claims a high rate of success. There have been 50,000 SingleMuslim.com weddings, and counting.
...
"When Younis originally set up his website, the problems came from fundamentalists. “Back in the day we used to have death threats,” he says. “All from anonymous keyboard warriors. They would be like ‘it is haram [forbidden] to display photographs of women’. People would have seen their sister on there.”

"Younis was unfazed. Now, he says, he doesn’t hear of anyone who is against what they are doing, mainly because, he believes, “everyone knows someone the site has helped”.
...
"You don’t have to spend very long on SingleMuslim.com to realise it is not Tinder. The options in creating a profile on the site require users to select their level of piety (Very religious/Somewhat religious/Prefer not to say) their sect (Shia/Sunni/Just Muslim) and appearance preferences (Hijab? Beard?).

“What we are not is this kind of swipe right, one-night stand kind of service,” Younis says. “People call it ‘halal dating’ and that’s fine. Halal means being wholesome and right in your faith.”

"About 10% of members join as a family. In those cases, traditionally the mums or the grannies use the site to do the matchmaking, Khan explains. What the company mostly promotes, though, is the opportunity to broaden that search as far as possible. The case studies on the site highlight couples who have crossed national and racial barriers to marry. “We are not SingleShia.com or SinglePakistanimuslim.com,” Younis suggests. There is an empowering impulse in this – and in the insistence that photographs must be full face. “Females who are fully covered don’t get in our galleries,” Khan says. “There is no point in having an image where you just see the eyes.”

Child marriage in California

The San Francisco Chronicle has the story:

Effort to bar child marriage in California runs into opposition
By Jill Tucker

"A Bay Area legislator was shocked when he learned from a young constituent that while Californians cannot legally consent to sex until they are 18, they can — with the permission of a parent and a judge’s order — get married at any age, even if their spouse is many years older.

“I thought, that can’t be true in California,” said state Sen. Jerry Hill, a Democrat from San Mateo. “We found that it is true in California and true in many states throughout the country.”

But Hill’s resulting proposal to bar juveniles from getting hitched has been watered down after it prompted strong objections from civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

As the emotional fight unfolds in Sacramento, there’s no agreement even about a basic piece of information — how many minors get married each year in California. People who want to limit such marriages say the total is in the thousands, while those who oppose the bill say that’s vastly inflated.

The state doesn’t keep such numbers, and even efforts to change that are running into resistance."
...
"Activists aiming to stop such marriages say they occur across demographic groups, spurred by religious reasons, cultural norms, pregnancy, financial incentives or, in some cases, to protect someone from statutory-rape accusations because marriage circumvents the age-of-consent requirement.

Nationally, about 5 of every 1,000 children ages 15 to 17 were married as of 2014, according to U.S. census data analyzed by the Pew Research Center — figures that don’t specify where the marriages occurred. Activists for age restrictions estimate that California sees about 3,000 marriages per year that include a minor.

The ACLU and other opponents say that estimate is inflated, noting that just 44 petitions for juvenile marriage were filed in Los Angeles County — which has a population just above 10 million — over the past five years.

The focus of efforts should be on abusive and coerced relationships, regardless of marital status, said Phyllida Burlingame of the ACLU’s Northern California chapter.

Referring to current regulations, including the requirement of a court order allowing a juvenile to marry, she said California had “a strong package of both programs and laws that prevent coerced marriage among youth, and a lack of data showing this is a widespread problem.” Hill’s original proposal, she said, “was a solution that wasn’t necessarily going to have the impact on improving young people's health and relationships that we want.”
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HT: Jen Stack

Polygamy convictions in Canada

The CBC has the story:

Winston Blackmore and James Oler found guilty of polygamy by B.C. judge
Former bishops of Bountiful both have numerous wives and children
CBC

"Two former religious leaders in B.C. have been found guilty of polygamy after marrying more than two dozen women over the course of 25 years.

"Winston Blackmore and James Oler were convicted of practising plural or "celestial" marriage in the fundamentalist community of Bountiful, B.C.

"In B.C. Supreme Court on Monday, Justice Sheri Ann Donegan said Blackmore "subscribed to beliefs and practices of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," a Mormon sect that believes in plural marriages.

"James Oler, another former leader from the same community, was accused of having five wives and Blackmore 24 wives.

"Both men are former bishops of the sect in the province's southeast. Neither denied having multiple marriages and Blackmore has fathered more than 145 children from his marriages.
...
"Blackmore's lawyer, Blair Suffredine, previously said he'd launch a constitutional challenge to the validity of the polygamy laws if his client were to be found guilty.
...
"The legal fight began in the early '90s when police first investigated allegations that residents of an isolated religious community were practising multiple marriages.

"A lack of clarity around Canada's polygamy laws initially led to failed attempts at prosecuting Blackmore, followed by several efforts to clarify the legislation, including a reference question to the B.C. Supreme Court.

"The court ruled in 2011 that laws banning polygamy were constitutional and did not violate religious freedoms guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, based in Utah, officially renounced polygamy in the late 1800s and disputes any connection to the fundamentalist group's form of Mormonism."
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Prosecution of polygamy in the U.S. has focused not on polygamy itself, but on the fact that some of the brides are underage.  Here's an AP report of the present case via ABC news, which includes the following:
"Oler was chosen to lead the Canadian community just north of the U.S. state of Idaho following Blackmore's excommunication from the sect in 2002 by Warren Jeffs, considered the prophet and leader of the group.

"Authorities have said Jeffs still leads the sect from a Texas prison, where he is serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides."
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See my earlier posts on polygamy

Yesterday was Loving Day: 50 years of legal inter-racial marriage throughout the United States

Yesterday was Loving Day, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on June 12, 1967 in the case of Loving v. Virginia, that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

I don't think anyone can help being reminded of the Supreme Court decision on June 26, 2015, that decided that bans on same sex marriage were unconstitutional (in the less fortuitously named case of OBERGEFELL ET AL. v. HODGES, DIRECTOR, OHIO DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ET AL.).

Here's the NY Times, on a couple married in 1950 in California: ‘We Are Not Unusual Anymore’: 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S.

"When they married in Oakland in 1950, mixed-race marriage had just become legal in California, the result of a lawsuit that reached the State Supreme Court. They are among the oldest living interracial couples legally married in the United States. It would be nearly two decades before all couples like them across the country were allowed to marry.

On Monday, they will mark the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court case that overturned antimiscegenation laws nationwide. Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man, had been sentenced to a year in a Virginia prison for marrying each other. The case would serve as a basis for the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage."

Who can be a common law couple?

Being a couple is about a lot of things, including survivor rights and medical visitation and decision-making rights...

Inseparable Israeli Sisters Fighting to Be Recognized as a Common Law Couple
"A day in court with two nonagenarian sisters, refugees from the Holocaust and constant companions, who seek the unprecedented status so that the one who lives longer can inherit the other's old-age allowance."

"The claimants, it turned out, are asking the National Insurance Institute to recognize each of them as being eligible to receive a next-of-kin allowance upon the other’s death. Effectively, they want the NII to grant them common-law status recognition.
A disturbing thought ran through the judge’s head. “Are you telling me that …” she said to attorney Igra who, guessing her thought, dismissed it with an “Absolutely not,” and placed before the judge a court ruling stating that sexual relations are not a condition for common-law recognition.
Relieved, the judge went on to sum up the lives of the two sisters in a few sentences, as she began reading her judgment. The claimants have lived in the same unit of a protected housing project since 2007. The claimants never married, are single and have no children. The claimants have a joint back account, and their old-age allowances have always been deposited in that account. The claimants manage their income and their expenses from the same bank account. The claimants purchased adjoining burial plots. The claimants’ only journeys abroad took place between 1995 and 1998, and always together, according to the Interior Ministry’s border inspection records.
...
"The Labor Court, though acknowledging the innovation and feasibility of the claim, did not accept it"

This request was not accepted by the Israeli court, but it is food for thought.

The Economist explores adultery

Hyphens are important, and the subject of this Economist essay is extra-marital sex, as opposed to extra marital sex.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH INFIDELITY?
Americans are increasingly intolerant of adultery, but Esther Perel believes they should take a more European attitude.

"Attitudes towards sex and sexual morality have changed dramatically in the past few decades, with ever fewer Westerners clucking over such things as premarital sex or love between two men or two women, but infidelity is still seen as a nuclear no-go zone in relationships. In fact, studies show that even as we have become more permissive about most things involving either sex or marriage – ever ready to accept couples who marry late, divorce early, forgo children or choose not to marry at all – we have grown only more censorious of philanderers. In a survey of public attitudes in 40 countries from the Pew Research Centre, an American think-tank, infidelity was the issue that earned the most opprobrium around the world. A general survey of public views in America, conducted by the University of Chicago since 1972, has found that Americans are more likely to say extramarital sex is always wrong now than they were throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Younger generations can usually be relied upon to push sexual morality in a more permissive direction, but infidelity is the one area where the young and old seem to agree. In this broadly tolerant age, when so many of us have come around to accepting love in all different shapes and sizes, adultery is the one indulgence that remains out of bounds."
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Here's the NORC* report, whose first figure shows that Extra-marital sex wins the race for something that is "always wrong" in public opinion, with 80% of the surveyed Americans agreeing (contrast that with 20% for sex before marriage).
Trends in Public Attitudes about Sexual Morality, APRIL 2013

*NORC at the University of Chicago = National Opinion Research Center.

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To get technical, I like to think of transactions as repugnant if some people want to engage in them and others don't want them to  even though the others can’t detect that the transaction has taken place unless someone tells them. So secret adultery seems to fall into that category (if you confine your attention to adulterers who engage in safe sex and are discreet, not overcome by guilt, etc.).  

And it appears that the repugnance of adultery is in a long cycle of a sort: it's on the short list of Ten Commandments ("don't commit adultery" comes right after "don't commit murder"), it appears to have become less repugnant in Europe and perhaps at times in the U.S., but its repugnance level in the US remains high, and apparently is rising.  And of course adultery carries the risk of discovery (not least because it may be the cause of guilt, and guilty secrets), and in places where it is repugnant it therefore remains a potential home-wrecker.  

Maybe the repugnance of adultery is related to the importance of contracts--if most people believe marriage comes with a promise of fidelity, then adultery is a violation of at least an implicit promise. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that a good marriage is a repeated game based on trust, and that even a well kept secret violation of trust takes a toll on the secret-keeper (if only through Mark Twain's adage "tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything") and hence on the marriage...

Repugnance is important--economists need to understand it better. (It's not just laws against buying kidneys for transplant...)
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More on adultery, and its sometimes special place in law: Adultery, Law, and the State: A History.
NOVEMBER, 1986, 38 Hastings L.J. 195 by Jeremy D. Weinstein

Matchmaking nudges and noodges in the internet age

The internet dating site JSwipe has a program called ParentPay. The website has a banner reading (subtly) "We want grandchildren."

Here's the text of the ad that made its way into my email:

"Hey Mom, Hey Dad,

Hanukkah is here! We have the perfect gift. 

We both know your kid is a catch and anyone would be lucky to date them. It's time to give your son or daughter (friend, cousin, or grandkids) the right tools for finding *Jewish* love in the digital age --- and fast track your way to grandkids.

JSwipe is the #1 Jewish dating app with nearly one million users across the world. We're responsible for hundreds of marriages and want your kids to be next! Really. That's our job.

JSwipe offers a First Class membership that provides premium features to maximize the impact of their dating experience. Better matches = better dates. While their unpaid internship is great for their career, it's not so great for helping them afford a First Class membership.

That's where you come in!

Because you're such incredible parents, we're offering you the opportunity to gift your child one-year of JSwipe First Class for $99, less than half of what it usually costs! Consider it their "love allowance." The perfect Hanukkah gift! The gift of love that keeps on giving.

Would you be happy to have a new guest at your next family holiday? We know Bubbe would. Don't Passover this opportunity! "
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JSwipe has a free mode and a paid mode, and the paid mode gives more signals (superswipes) that can be sent per day, etc.  Here's a review

Exorcism: "Mistress dispellers" in China

The NY Times has the story: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

"Mistress-dispelling services, increasingly common in China’s larger cities, specialize in ending affairs between married men and their extramarital lovers.

"Typically hired by a scorned wife, they coach women on how to save their marriages, while inducing the mistress to disappear. For a fee that can start in the tens of thousands of dollars, they will subtly infiltrate the mistress’s life, winning her friendship and trust in an attempt to break up the affair. The services have emerged as China’s economy has opened up in recent decades, and as extramarital affairs grew more common.
...
"Mistress dispelling typically begins with research on the targeted woman, said Shu Xin, Weiqing’s director. An investigation team — often including a psychotherapist and, to keep on the safe side, a lawyer — analyzes her family, friends, education and job before sending in an employee that Weiqing calls a counselor.

“Once we figure out what type of mistress she is — in it for money, love or sex — we draw up a plan,” Mr. Shu said.

"The counselor might move into the mistress’s apartment building or start working out at her gym, getting to know her, becoming her confidante and eventually turning her feelings against her partner. Sometimes, the counselor finds her a new lover, a job opening in another city or otherwise convinces her to leave the married man. Weiqing and other agencies said its counselors were prohibited from becoming intimately involved with the mistress or from using or threatening violence.
...
"The companies say it typically takes about three months to dispel a mistress. Yu Feng, director of the Chongqing Jialijiawai Marriage and Family Service Center, said his team has dispelled 260 mistresses in the last two years."