My apology for the unromantic title I give to such a romantic subject. In fact, during my writing here, I indeed plan to make an exploration on this topic and transform it to the least romantic analysis possible.
Yes, soulmate is made. But to a large extent, soulmate is found.
Man and women do not just sit and wait at home or go shopping to a ‘soulmate’ factory to have their soulmate manufactured. They look for that person.
Yes, they search.
However, the degree of searching varies accordingly to their culture and the wave of history.
It may not be the exact same way as when we look for the perfect job, but the men and women of this century are amazingly active when it comes to looking for love.
In the job market, if it is a competitive one- meaning that there is a vast number of workers and employers, nobody has the upper hand when it comes to selecting the right match. When every worker is closely homogeneous, the match is arguably rather random, for the fact that an employer is better off whomever they hire. Everybody who find his match is happy.
True, romance cannot be that simple. True, the love-finding market is not at all either that random or perfectly competitive.
In particular, go back a couple of century ago, it would be somewhat difficult to say that BOTH men and women were equally active at the search for love. On the other hand, it would be mostly men who did the search, while ‘the soulmate’ product was put passively on the shelves. ‘Male’ customers had the bargaining power to select his match. It would not be too wrong if we go as far as to resemble this situation to the ‘monopsony’ market. Men differentiated themselves through various degree of social positions, education level and professional rank whilst most of the ‘ladies’ product, apart from the social hierarchy where she was born into, were closely uniform. The match would be the one that made the person with more bargaining power-men- better off. In another non-romantic sense, the women he picked would be the one that was able to maximise not only his own utility function, but also the household function. (Becker:1973)
What about the romance market now?
Women have become a lot more differentiated than before. Education, careers and other social aspects that come with it make the ladies as distinct as the gentlemen. Women gained in the level of bargaining in the love-matching market.
However……
One main constraint persists. Even though women benefit from the pills and modern contraception a great deal, they remain the losers in the battle against the biological clock. Therefore, in a love market where men become relative less differentiated, one the one hand, these twentieth century women gain in their bargaining power to find the most perfect match. On the other hand, in the assumed world where everyone has ‘baby’ in their marriage production function, the women’s level of patience in the soulmate search game is decreasing in an increasing rate. Time constraint limits the time for the love search.
In a job market, facing the parallel constraint of time, workers thus settle for the job that maybe not perfectly fit but satisfies their reservation wage.
And so to conclude it in the least possible romantic way, due to this constraint, the soulmate may not even be Mr. Right, but Mr. Right-Now, for the reason that household production can begin its engine!!!
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Reference
S. Levitt& S. Dubner: Freakonomics (2005)
Gary Becker: The Theory of Marriage (1973)
Tim Harford: The Logic of Life
Carrie Bradshaw :"Sex and the City"
4 comments:
You are right that, historically, men are the ones who do the choosing, and, to a certain extent, the pattern remains so today. Social norm still discourages women from pursuing men or initiating a relationship and, to use your term, for fear that they might appear "un-lady-like". So, besides the biological constraint, there's a social constraint as well.
To Mr. Green Curry,
If I understand your article correctly, you are saying that soulmate is a product of a search process (not a "made process") and that there is a time constraint facing women. As a result, woman cannot choose a product "man" that maximizes her life-time utility function but rather only a "man" who can maximize her current period utility. Current period, in this case, I mean a period at which her biological clock almost stops.
Don't you think that this is a pretty strong separability assumption (i.e. separability overtime) that you are making here!
Mr. Green Curry,
If I understand your article correctly, you are saying that soulmate is a product of a search process (not a "made process") and that there is a time constraint facing women. As a result, woman cannot choose a product "man" that maximizes her life-time utility function but rather only a "man" who can maximize her current period utility. Current period, in this case, I mean a period at which her biological clock almost stops.
Don't you think that this is a pretty strong separability assumption (i.e. separability overtime) that you are making here!
I think my point is women do prefer to maximise their utility function over a lifetime. However, because of the time constraint she has, her level of patience is depleting rapidly towards the later age. As a result, her power to negotiate , on issues such as her role in a married family,when she finds her match-the right one- is not relatively as strong. Both spouses may have a baby in their household function. Nevertheless the one who holds a weaker bargaining power may end up be the one who takes all baggages that come along with.
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