Thursday, 25th February, Philadelphia: the economist
We’re leaving New York today on a flight out of Newark at 9.25pm.
We wake up to heavy heavy snowfall. Not cool.
The real curveball today was devised entirely by me: I have organised an interview with an economics professor at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It’s a last minute plan – like everything on this trip – a friend of mine forwarded us a link to a New York Times Article on the evolving state of marriage, with contribution from our much loved Dr Helen Fisher.
Professor Betsey Stevenson, PhD, is a professor of business and public policy. She’s written a number of papers on the economics of marriage and has created a Marriage Calculator based on US census data over the last 50 years which gives individuals their percentage likelihood of divorce.
The statistic that 50% of marriages in the UK (and pretty much the Western world) end in divorce has been the driving force for this entire journey – we wanted to find out what makes marriage last. The opportunity to interview a US economist who could talk about that statistic, why it’s not entirely reliable, the changing dynamics of marriage – all without subjectivity, simply by analysing the numbers – was an opportunity not to be missed. Which is why we found ourselves hauling every single item we owned from New York to Philadelphia in the heavy heavy snow. Only to be there for 2 hours before returning to Newark to catch a plane.
But she was worth it. 100%. Our last interview on the road for Going the Distance was an absolute cracker. She was fascinating, talking about the evolution of marriage from one of shared production to one of shared consumption. In essence, that a couple 50 years ago chose each other on the basis that they would be establishing a small factory (he goes out into the market, she has to run the home and raise the children) and now, the model has changed so that it makes more sense economically for both partners to be earning (it costs less now to buy clothes from Walmart than to make them at home) and with both partners financially independent, marriage now is about sharing the fruits of the work. ie people chose each other now based on shared goals, opinions and leisure activities, whereas it boiled down more to choosing a business partner in this game of life.
I’m not doing her justice with this garbling, but needless to say, she was superb. Thoroughly worth the schlep out of state!
