{"id":1042,"date":"2008-01-18T15:03:52","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T22:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2008-01-18T15:03:52","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T22:03:52","slug":"i_love_you_coco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=1042","title":{"rendered":"I love you, co-consumer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist&#8217;s Free Exchange blog <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/freeexchange\/2008\/01\/the_age_of_hedonic_marriage.cfm\">points<\/a> to a new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato-unbound.org\/2008\/01\/18\/betsey-stevenson-and-justin-wolfers\/marriage-and-the-market\/\">essay<\/a> by two Wharton professors who argue that the economic basis of marriage and family has shifted dramatically. People used to get married and have kids to gain production efficiencies &#8211; to expand the available labor to, say, run a farm. Marriage, the authors note, &#8220;provided the key means to strategic &#8216;mergers&#8217;\u2013 a way to form alliances and boost the financial welfare of the household.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But that world&#8217;s gone, at least in the wealthy West. As the market has progressed to take over most of the supply-side roles that once existed inside marriages and families, the old economic rationale, and motivation, for being wives and husbands, moms and dads, has eroded. &#8220;So,&#8221; the authors write, &#8220;what drives modern marriage? We believe that the answer lies in a shift from the family as a forum for shared production, to shared consumption &#8230; the key today is consumption complementarities &#8211; activities that are not only enjoyable, but are more enjoyable when shared with a spouse. We call this new model of sharing our lives &#8216;hedonic marriage.&#8217; &#8230; As consumption increases, so too will the demand to have someone with whom to share these pleasures.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I think that means that money can buy you love &#8211; or at least it can create the economic conditions most conducive to love. And, hey, what&#8217;s the difference?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist&#8217;s Free Exchange blog points to a new essay by two Wharton professors who argue that the economic basis of marriage and family has shifted dramatically. People used to get married and have kids to gain production efficiencies &#8211; to expand the available labor to, say, run a farm. Marriage, the authors note, &#8220;provided [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}