Marriage Penalty

Here are the main points of this artile in NY Times:

1. Women are catching up with men in terms of education and income.
2. Assortative mating -- the tendency of like to marry like -- is becoming easier with Internet.
3. As the result of #1 and #2, the gap between the well-paid and well-educated couples and those of less privileged ones is getting bigger.

And that leads to an interesting question:"are we achieving more egalitarian marriages at the cost of a more egalitarian society?"

This might well be one of the reason for the increasing inequalities when they are measured by households. But I am more amused by the funny side point:

Putting love aside, as men's and women's roles continue to shift, other standards for selecting a partner may come to the fore. Indeed, the sociologist Julie Press recently offered what she called "a gynocentric theory of assortative mating", moving the focus from what men now desire in a marriage partner to the evolving preferences of women. What would-be wives may be seeking now, she proposed in The Journal of Marriage and Family, is “cute butts and housework” — that is, a man with an appealing physique and a willingness to wash dishes. Could this be a feminist slogan for our time?

Funny indeed.