An economist can assign a much different dollar value for men & women for marriage.
By Tom Miller — Written on Nov 16, 2009
The Beatles declared that you "Can't Buy Me Love" (as did Patrick Dempsey) but that doesn't mean you can't put a price on it. According to Paul Frijters of Australia's Queensland University (per the Sidney Morning Herald) marriage is worth approximately A$32,000 (that's $30,000 in US dollars) in happiness to a man, and A$16,000/$15,000 to a lady. Read : Can You Buy Happiness?
Essentially, the act of getting married makes a man equally happy as getting lump payments equaling $30,000. The analysis goes on to mention that men feel like divorce is like losing A$110,000 of happiness (and probably actual dollars) for men while ladies feel like they're losing A$9,000. The last one makes sense, as guys are statistically way more likely to commit suicide after a divorce than ladies. Please check out the SMH for more of the calculations, very interesting stuff. Read: The Price of Love
While I have no experience with being married, divorced or widowed, I am familiar with putting monetary value on love and relationships. Let me preface this by saying I was a late bloomer and at 30 am just now growing into my nose. Young men without chins and with small ears are seldom attractive to women, even if we'll do anything they say. On one hand, we place the women on a pedestal and on the other, we objectify women because we don't know any better.
As a young man I once put the price of having sex at $100. I never told any of my lady friends because I was convinced that a lady on a date with me would likely feel obligated to recriprocate somehow after a threshold of exactly one Benjamin was achieved. Even though I was too demure to mention my triple digit rule to any of my dates, I was hanging out with women who were too classy for something like that. In fact, given my $100 theory, one of my amigos liked to point out that I'd paid for far more sex than I will likely ever have.
Anyone out there assign a dollar amount to anything? Do you find it crass or appealing?