Re: For Men, Marriage is a Lose/Lose Prospect

In article <marek1-65E242.20073707022008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
marek1@xxxxxxx says...

On Feb 6, 11:26 pm, Mark Borgerson <mborger...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <13qkvce2gemb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Soci...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...

"PolishKnight" <mar...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:marek1-522127.20000406022008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

With PLENTY of pictures for those of you who need visual aids:
http://loseloseprospect.blogspot.com/

Ha ha. If that page only had a hyperlink anchor at each
of the photo captions, it would spare folks a lot of time
explaining basic reality to this happy little news group's
harrassers. One would need only to provide the link
and the rest of the wise people here would smile knowingly.

Oh, by the way, here's the permalink to that page:
<http://loseloseprospect.blogspot.com/2008/01/for-men-marriage-is-lose..=
.>

However valid that site may be, it contains some idiotic innumeracy:

" If your car was as reliable as marriage, every time you got in it you
would have a one in two chance of crashing."

This is silly to start with, because people don't get married
several times per day.

Agreed and this occurred to me too. But I was too busy having fun to
care about his wording.

His language was dramatic and it's clear he's talking about lifetime
statistics If at the time of car purchase, you knew that your chances
of an serious accident were 50/50, you'd think
twice. In addition, you choose to get into your car on a daily basis
while a decision to marry is a rare event.

Here's a page I found with some good statistics:
http://www.lawcore.com/car-accident/statistics.html

In addition there's also a wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_accident

I've been in 3 car crashes which had the potential to be life
threatening in about 45 years of driving. Thanks to luck and
seat belts, I was not injured in any of them. However two
of the cars were totaled. OTOH, I've been married 20
years without a divorce. I guess I must be a pretty lucky
guy!

More in a bit:

Let's suppose that a marriage has a 50% probability of failing
in the first year (in itself a convenient but innacurate assumption,
since the 82% of marriages last to their 5th anniversary):

http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS.shtml

Let's suppose that you get into your car 500 times in
a year----a bit low for Americans, but convenient.

Then to achieve a 50% probability of crashing in 500 drives

0.50 =3D P500 =3D (P1 ^ 500);

The reality is that the probability of a marriage failing on
a particular day is WAY less than 0.0001%.

All very smart sounding but sadly irrelevent without comparing it to
actual auto statistics that are easily available.

The legal site provided this powerful statistic:
"More than 25% of all car drivers were involved in car accidents in a
five year period."
And yours (thanks for the link) says:
"Percentage of married people who reach their 5th, 10th, and 15th
anniversaries: 5th: 82% "


Sadly, the auto statistic is a bit off the point, since it doesn't
provide data on how many times people get into their cars---the
comparison made by the original author.

So, 25% of all drivers will have SOME kind of accident by their 5th
year while 18% of marriages will end in divorce by that time period.

The problem with the car accident data is that it doesn't say anything
about the severity of the problem. Some car accidents are probably
more like an argument with a spouse than a divorce. A minor fender-
bender or bumping a signpost hard enough to dent the bumper is hardly
the equivalent of a divorce.

As the web site showed, a woman leaving the apartment and going
to move back in with her mother is harmless compared to the ones that
demand 18 years of so-called "child" support. Those should be
compared to auto accident "injuries"

The legal site has statistics for those too:

"In 2002, there were around 6,316,000 car accidents in the US, with
these causing about 2.9 million injuries. In 2003, the total number of
car accidents was 6,328,000 and the resulting injuries stood at almost
3 million." and
"More than 3 million people get injured due to car accidents, with
more than 2 million of these injuries being permanent."

(So basically, just cut the 25% figure down by 3 for permanent
injuries and by 2 for injuries in general)

So that puts it into perspective: Your odds of getting PERMANENTLY
injured in your car over the next 5 years is about 8%

Sheesh! That's really quite sobering, isn't it? Sure, I might have
carried some digit over wrong but still... it gave me food for
thought.

After a few scary accidents---the worst of which occurred when another
driver ran a stop sign and spun me off the road and into a utility
pole---I think about the risks of driving every day. That's a
fundamental part of defensive driving.

I don't have a marital statistic or number onhand to guess what
percent of men who marry will divoce and be ordered to pay child-
support or alimony or some other catastrophe. I'll make a guess
though:

1) Most men who marry will probably have children. How about 75%?
2) 30% of marriages end in divorce between the 5th and 15th year.

So whatcha think? Is it reasonable to guess that 0.75 x 0.3 that at
least 22% of married fathers will wind up divorced? (I'm being
conservatives here since it's possible many men may escape with a
"starter" marriage by getting divorced the first time before
children in 5 years and remarrying successfully.) Also,
this is a lifetime statistic while the serious auto accident
rate was just for 5 years.

That may be close. According to good ol' Divorce Magazine,
69% of children under 18 are living with both parents. The
other 31% must be living with either the mother or the father.
I suspect there are some 'gotchas' working back from children
to fathers, but it may be a good rough estimate. Of course,
that's an 18-year stat, not a 5-year stat.

Here's a paper on child support---which I haven't yet finished
reading:

http://www.npc.umich.edu/publications/workingpaper05/paper17/cancian-meyer-Sept_10c-dd.pdf

Only about 2/3s of divorced mothers have a child support order
in place---another factor to multiply into the statistics.

I would welcome any help with the statistics here. The
probability of a marriage failing certainly extends over
many years and the probability is influenced by people who
go through multiple divorces. Thus the odds are significantly
better for people contemplating their first marriage. Half of
marriages last more than 7 years.

Actually, I had heard just the opposite: That second marriages tended
to be more stable than the first (triumph of hope over experience as
well as learning from their mistakes) But that's just what I heard.
Did you see a statistic for your claim or is that just a guess?

Same source as before:

Median duration of first marriages that end in divorce:
Males: 7.8 years
Females: 7.9 years
Median duration of second marriages that end in divorce:
Males: 7.3 years
Females: 6.8 years

Without getting into arguments about whether 'average' is
mean or median, it looks like 2nd marriages are only slightly
shorter than first marriages.


<<SNIP>>

Despite the bad statistics, young men should be aware of another
facet of statistic: Expectation. That is the probability of
an event multiplied by the cost of the event. If a bad marriage
costs you 50% of your earnings for 20 years, you have to multiply
that loss times the probability of divorce over the time period.
That turns out to be a lot of money to gamble!

Mark Borgerson

I think the web site made that abundantly, and humorously,
clear. :-)

I prefer a my humor to be a bit better based in reality, especially
if the author is going to go all statistical on me.....


Mark Borgerson

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: For Men, Marriage is a Lose/Lose Prospect
    ... of an serious accident were 50/50, ... years without a divorce. ... actual auto statistics that are easily available. ... year while 18% of marriages will end in divorce by that time period. ...
    (soc.men)
  • Re: For Men, Marriage is a Lose/Lose Prospect
    ... actual auto statistics that are easily available. ... are playing roulette, measuring car accident probability, ... or calculating the probability of divorce. ... year while 18% of marriages will end in divorce by that time period. ...
    (soc.men)