"Tinder" is not on you!

How dating services affect economic development, and marriages on questions of inequality, as well as the secrets of Russian clans

Russians are more and more prefer to get acquainted online. Over the past year, the audience of the VK Dating service increased by 81% and exceeded 22 million unique users. The audience of the dating service "Mamba" is 70 million people, from March to December 2022 its growth amounted to 20%, TASS reports.

Against this background, the results of the Tinder dating application - 1.16 million in a month, according to Mediascope statistics at the beginning of the year - do not look very convincing. This is about half as much than that of the Mamba. Match Group, which owns Tinder, announced that it will stop its activities in Russia by June 30, but the mass outflow of Russian Tinder users occurred last spring, when the Match Group turned off paid options. Do not rush to postpone the text - it's not about the "strawberry". The method of choosing a marriage partner and the criteria by which people seek dating are of great importance for the economy - much more than you can imagine.

The marriage revolution of Queen Victoria

“ If I can’t get money for myself with any means, which means I have to marry the rich ,” said Misha Balzaminov, the character of the play by Alexander Ostrovsky. “ Ah, Mamenka, what a resentment it is, that everything in the world is so badly opened! The rich marries the rich, the poor - the poor. Is there any justice in this , ”the unlucky groom lamented?

And this injustice can only be corrected in radical ways, made the conclusion of balmins.

“If I were a king, I would have issued such a law that the rich would marry the poor, and the poor - to the rich; And whoever does not obey is the death penalty. ”

Here you are laughing, and in vain - a social experiment under the motto “The rich is married to the poor, and the poor marries the rich” realized in reality! Moreover, about the same years when Misha Balzaminov was looking for a rich bride. True, in order to take part in such an experiment, Balzaminov would have to go to England, where the Rules of Queen Victoria.

In Victorian England, there was a social practice, which can be called "Tinder for aristocrats." These were the famous London seasons, where elite brides and bachelors from good families gathered from all over the country, the rest of the year, who were sitting in their estates around all the country.

Actually, at balls, dinners and other events, aristocrats and aristocrats, as we would say now, “maximally maximally candidates and candidates.

The whole holiday of life was interrupted in 1861, when Queen Victoria, extremely upset by the almost simultaneous death of her mother and beloved husband, put on mourning and abolished the “seasons” for three years. And if the gentlemen, as they say, could tolerate, then the young lady was much worse: the customs at that time were the most conservative-the girl had to find her husband for a year or two after the publication, and if she could not, get the stigma of the losers and the old virgin, and young competitors are pressing.

About what happened next, said Mark Goni, an economist from the University of Bergen and a marriage researcher in an article by Assortive Matching At the Top of the Distribution: Evidence from the World's Most Exclusive Marriage Market , a year ago, a year ago published by prestigious American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 14 (3):

The girls hastily began to look for their gentlemen, but ... it turned out that a lady from a good family without a presence on a high-society party in London to find a level in the English province is not so easy. It was not that it was necessary to agree to the very “poor gentlemen” (like a loser Balzaminov), but on those that they would not be allowed into the landowner estate before. As a result, aristocrats whose marriage age fell on years without “seasons” (1861–1863), the probability of marrying a commoner was 40% higher than those who had the opportunity to hang out in the capital. But that's not all. Queen Victoria would know what would happen later - she, perhaps, would not have cancel the “seasons”.

It turned out that the marriages of aristocrats with commoners (at least educated, but living their labor, say, lawyers) seriously undermine the political influence of their families. The brothers of such women by 50% (!) Less often became members of the parliament.

There were two reasons for how Mark persecution writes.

• The first - on the maintenance of the sister had to spend money that could go to the polls.

• And the second, the main one, - such families disappeared the opportunity to use the political capital of her husband - he simply did not have this capital. There would be a sister's chosen one with an aristocrat - another thing. But the chance of an “equal marriage” was closed by the queen, “blocked” the aristocratic “Tinder”.

And then it turned out that in those areas where rich girls entered into unequal marriages, higher local taxes were established in the 1870s-since aristocratic families, reducing political capital, lost the elections there. Of the local taxes, schools were funded, in particular, the abolition of the queen’s balls helped to pay for their studies at school for children from poor families, explains Mark Goni. And in this way it helped to reduce inequality

Family money is more important than government money

Wait to rejoice, the Nobel laureate James Hekman (Chicago University) and its co -authors on the study of International Transmission of Family Influence, published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, could say. If someone fulfilled Balzaminov’s dream and married a rich bride, this does not mean that society has become more fair.

In economic theory, there is the concept of intercolanst mobility in income - when the income of parents and their grown children are compared at a comparable age (how much a parent received at his 40 years and how much his child receives in his 40 years).

High intercolary mobility of income means that children have the most possibilities to increase their socio-economic status compared to parents. It is believed that high intercoral mobility smooths out the inequality of income in society, because means a high equality of opportunities to achieve the "upper steps" of the revenue distribution.

On this assumption, social policy in many countries is built -

Financing of schools, the distribution of “maternal capital”, a unified testing system for school graduates and even positive discrimination - when “goet's immigrants” gain an advantage when entering college or when hiring for work.

All this works, but ... not as effective as it seems, James Hekman would say. The economist studied the intercoral ties of income, assets, education and consumption in Denmark - an exemplary country of the first world - mononational, educated, democratic, uncorompted, with developed institutions, a high level of well -being, etc. And Hekman came to the conclusion: the “degree of intercolar mobility” even in such an “exemplary” country is very high. And especially strongly - "for children growing in dysfunctional conditions." That is, born on a social day in most cases is doomed there and stay there.

Why so? The fact is, Hekman explains that the income of children (wider - their social success) is a derivative of their parents' income. But not from current income, but from expected throughout life.

In other words,

The more a person is confident in the steady growth of his own income (or in maintaining these income at a high level) - the more resources he is ready to invest in the development of his child.

More investments in education/education (good books, tutors, time for classes, duration of training) - higher and the result (on average)

But if there is no such confidence, there will be no investment in the development of children either. And no “maternity capital” here is not an assistant (in relation to the Russian Federation: what do mothers mainly spend this “capital”? - right, on the closure of the mortgage. You heard that this capital went massively to education? No, because mothers in the Russian Federation understand: in order to break up through education, such capital is not enough, and the apartment is obvious).

Thus,

“The expected income of parents is the best predictor of the child’s life results than their actual income - since the income expected during the life cycle better reflects the resources that parents use, making investment decisions regarding their children”,

Hekman concludes.

This is the bad news for those who think to solve the “problem of intercolar mobility” (the transformations of the poor, if not in the rich, then at least the middle class) through “subsidies”, “grants” and “maternal capital” - parental poverty will outweigh, and “food will not go into the horse”.

Smart for smart

And what does Tinder have to do with it, you ask? Despite the fact that “Tinder” (and other services of online acquaintances) is a kind of permanent “London Seasons” that allow people to sort contacts in search of a suitable pair.

But is it bad? For an individual, it is possible, well, but for social mobility in society - not very, the authors of the study “Inequality of income in the United States and mixed marriages” will say.

As an explanation, they give such an example.

Suppose that there are only two types of people equal in number: those who studied at college, and those who did not study. Those who went to school earn $ 30, and those who did not study are $ 10. If educated men marry uneducated women, and uneducated men marry educated women, then each household will earn a total of $ 40. Thus, households are completely equalized.

Now imagine a world in which educated people marry only other educated people. Then the household, consisting of an educated man and an educated woman, will earn $ 60 compared to 20 dollars earned by household, consisting only of uneducated spouses.

Households in the upper part of the distribution will have an income three times more than those in the lower part.

This, of course, is a model. But does it work in real life?

Yes. Economists studied information about the education and income level of hundreds of thousands of households in the United States (according to the US Census Bureau for the period from 1960 to 2005) - and came to the conclusion that since the second half of the twentieth century the correlation between spouses in the level of education has grown sharply.

And if earlier the standard situation was the one in which (conditionally) the “lawyer” or “engineer” could marry the “secretary” or “waitress”, then since the mid-1960s, marriages were increasingly becoming between “equals by education”.

“Universots are marrying on the universent,” Balzamin would say. And it was this circumstance that became one of the important reasons for the growth of the revenues of the rich - and the stagnation of the income of the poor.

How does this work? We can assume that a high level of education involves a high level of intelligence - and in such pairs “smart children” are born (IQ is inherited by about 60%).

But more important is another -

“Smart = educated = wealthy” parents are more likely to provide the child with good conditions for the development of his abilities.

Back in the mid-1980s, children's psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Rishli from Kansas University found out that a child from an educated and secured family will hear 32 million words more from his parents by his parents than the child whose parents lived on the benefit, and this will have a huge impact on the development of children's intelligence. And it will give such a child a significant advantage that cannot be compensated by any “subsidies”, “grants” and “maternal capital”.

Friendship and justice

Ah, Mama, what a resentment it is, that everything in the world is so badly opened! Smart marries smart, a fool - not very smart. Is there any justice in this, we hear the lamentations of Balzaminov.

There is no justice in this, the economists Caesar Santos, Nezi Ganer, Georgy Korchakov and Jeremy Greenwood, who studied how the selection of partners “on a diploma” affects the inequality of income, will say. According to them,

If people chose satellites exclusively “in appearance” and by the ability to play “conditionally-traced” family roles (dad works in the office, and mom works in the kitchen), then the “gini coefficient” in the USA, reflecting the level of inequality, could fall from 0.43 to 0.34.

It turns out that the class of "hereditary aristocrats" is being replaced by a class of "hereditary meritocrates"? We can assume that even if the system of social support for the poor will work perfectly, and access to money and authorities will be distributed only on the basis of personal merits, children from “good families” will have an unattainable advantage over their peers from “simple”

Well, not everything is so bad, Harvard economist Raj Chetti will say. A person will not be alive, but also by social capital. Clear and its co-authors on the study of Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility, proved that the only truly working social elevator (not counting marriage)-

These are friendly relations with rich peers who can help a person from the bottoms to be in another public strategic strategic strategic. It will cost almost nothing rich - but for the poor, their patronage can be the main success in life.

But, he says even, such friendships can arise only at the top university where children of the elite study-and in order to go there “from scratch”, you must have truly outstanding abilities “to craft or theft”. Everything else will not help you - all your life you will remain a hired employee without capital and prospects.

The main secret of the Russian elite

Family ties of the ruling class in Russia are almost a state secret. Those who and how are marriage in the elite - almost nothing is known about this. And if the information more or less seeps into public space about family ties of higher families, then we know very little about the second echelon of the elites.

Pay attention to how rarely professional fighters for family values ​​appear in the company of parents, wives and children. Also stingy and their official biographies, although it would seem that this is?

If a person safely continued the bossy dynasty-why not boast of a grandfather-gene or dad-minister? Or, on the contrary, if a person was born “by anyone”, but became “everyone”, - even more reasons for the pride of the Russian Federation, the country of opportunities? But no. For such modesty, “capitals ministers” should be some kind of systemic reason.

An explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the index of clan capitalism of 2023, Crony-Capitalism Index, published by The Economist. In this rating of the Russian Federation, it takes first place. Crony-Capitalism, clan capitalism, it is also called “Kumovsky”, “fraternal” or “capitalism for their own”-an economy based on the close relations of capitalists with government agents.

According to The Economist, the wealth of Russian billionaires received in the "fraternal" sectors is 19% of Russia's GDP. Such sectors include banking, construction, real estate and natural resources.

Family ties in the Russian ruling caste is much more important than in any other country-they replace non-working social institutions and serve as a guarantee of security.

What could have happened if Misha Balzaminov had the opportunity to start an account on a social network? Alas, this would not bring him closer to the desired companion. As Ethan Zuckerman explains in the book “New Compounds. Digital cosmopolitans in the communication era, ”algorithms for recommendations on social networks and search engines are arranged so that we“ do not expand our horizon, but, on the contrary, we’re more and more close in the fretenlet ”: we see what we want to see ourselves, and what is interesting to our friends, but not what may be really useful for us.

The rich will see the rich on social networks, and the poor will be poor.

In other words, the social network and the online dating service would help Balzaminov find the “bride”-but only from the same social layer to which he belonged to and who was so hoping to leave.

Perhaps Misha Balzaminov did not know the words “institutional economy”, but he caught the essence of the problem of social elevators in a caste society absolutely accurately - in order to reformat the “aristocratic” marriage market - it is necessary that the costs from maintaining the model of “fraternal capitalism” reach a level unacceptable to the capitalists themselves.