Marriage Futures
After a couple announce their engagement, but before they tie the knot, talk among friends and family often turns to how long the marriage will last. When folks are not optimistic, they may wonder if they should tell the couple. But they usually say nothing, depriving the couple of crucial signals to reconsider.
Imagine a web site where you could start a market to bet on the duration of any upcoming or current marriage. That is, you could buy or sell assets that pay in proportion to the number of years the marriage will last, if it begins, up to some maximum of say fifty years. If the marriage never starts, you get your money back.
Once it became widely known that such market prices are often available, wedding guests and the couple would probably check out the price before the wedding, coordinating everyone’s expectations about the marriage.
Added 27Oct: You can estimate marriages here just for fun, and Ravages made a similar betting suggestion.
Pride would likely induce the couple to try to push up the price estimate of their marriage duration. Perhaps disgruntled rivals would try to push the price down. Both would provide crucial liquidity to get the market going. And successful couples would get a great fifty year wedding present from cashing in their bets.
Since weddings and divorces are a matter of public record, there should be little dispute on who won these bets. The long time scale would mean that the bets should be of assets bonds or stock index funds, which increase in value over time. The market price would usually be somewhat lopsided, usually being closer to zero than to the maximum time, which might bias the price up a bit, but that doesn’t seem a big problem.
These markets could create incentives for outsiders to hurt the marriage, such as causing or spreading rumors about cheating. But my guess is that the suspicion of hidden powers out there trying to hurt the marriage would on average tie the couple to each other all the stronger.
If the cost of setting up these markets became low, people might set them up for couples they know who are not yet engaged, as a way to encouraging such couples to consider (or reject) engagement. Overall marriage futures could provide quite socially valuable advice on such important decisions. In the US, however, gambling laws would prevent cash versions of these markets.
From a conversation with Steven Landsburg.
This is an intriguing idea on the academic level, but it ends in folly rather than purpose. As I read along, I kept expecting at any moment that you would turn the corner from symbolism to some socially beneficial application, but it never happened.
Marriage has become more a spectator sport than a participatory one. Today, a couple goes it alone, while friends and family do nothing to ensure its success. In that aspect, we agree that the participation of the community is the key to success.
I would submit to you that a parallel of this idea is already taking place in some marriages, and that the model can be applied to countless others not merely for short-term material benefit but for long-term societal health.
Wise friends and family would go beyond discussing the matter among themselves to encouraging – even expecting – the couple to seek pre-marriage counseling. A pre-marriage inventory tool often brings out the very concerns that the friends and family might have felt or even expressed, but this time from an objective professional. The professional can then lead the couple to examine and address these potential weaknesses (as well as the potential strengths) revealed through the inventory.
Should the couple choose to marry, they should plan their ceremony with purpose. It requires a paradigm shift that considers invitees to the ceremony not merely as guests to be fed at a reception, but as investors in their marriage. Some savvy couples are choosing to include in their ceremony a voluntary covenant signing, giving all those in attendance the opportunity to sign on as witnesses and as those who hold them accountable to their vows.
There will always be pressure on a marriage from both inside and out that will contribute to its strengthening or weakening. The goal is to maximize the positive forces (again, both inside and out) and minimize the negative. While the outcome might not be as tangible as market prices, the benefits of a good marriage far outweigh any material tag that can be placed on it.
But I have to admit that this reality never seemed so clear as it is now after your market analogy. Thank you.
I agree with Susan; this is a bad idea. Has there ever been a case of a couple calling off a wedding because family or friends disapproved? Placing wagers against the marriage is only likely to cause bad feelings and suspicion, but it would not be likely to dissuade them from tying the knot. In fact, I think such a market might isolate the couple, who rightly would wonder which of their friends had bet against them. Would you ask a friend for advice if you suspected that he had wagered actual cash on the prospect that your marriage would collapse? Dealing with friends and family requires trust, and the market would undermine that, weakening the support structure that the new couple will need if the marriage is to succeed.
Also, I doubt there would be enough public information available for the market to work efficiently. Marriages are fairly private affairs, that can work (or fail) on many different levels. Given the complexity of the issue, and the relatively small pool of people who would have any knowledge of the couple, I think a market is the wrong approach.