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Predictions about immigration and attractiveness
Sebastian Flyte, an unusual commentator, wrote:
A man's mate value is tied to status - if he emigrates he throws away whatever mate value he built up in his life. A girl's is tied to youth and beauty. These are carried with her luggage.
He has a point. Female migrants should on average be prettier, ceteris paribus, than those who stay in the old country. That means holding constant income, education, and some other variables. Female immigrants should find it easier to marry into the receiving country's population than do male immigrants. From a public choice point of view, the women in the country receiving the immigrants should be more suspicious of liberal immigration policies than should be the men in the receiving country. It is up for grabs whether male immigrants should be handsomer or uglier than average, relative to their home country populations, again holding constant some relevant variables.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 17, 2009 at 10:23 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Not sure where the point is there. Status is quite portable these days (my education & finances don't stay behind when moving), and even your source seems to believe that women consider looks when making "mating decisions".
Posted by: Thomas Themel at Jul 17, 2009 10:34:19 AM
I have noticed among immigrant families that the sons raised in the USA sometimes get wives easily from the old country but the daughters have a more difficult time. The family distrusts American boys not part of the immigrant group and distrust the potential immigrant boys because they might just want the green card.
Posted by: Floccina at Jul 17, 2009 10:44:24 AM
I'm not sure this argument cuts it. My own experience, as well as those I've talked to, is that "foreign males" are generally found more attractive than native males and that men generally have much greater luck with women on foreign soil. Many claim they are deemed "more attractive" by women when abroad than in their own countries.
But it might be the case that this attraction is only short-term and therefore does not have any effect on marriage statistics.
Posted by: Per Bylund at Jul 17, 2009 10:48:41 AM
An interesting observation. It also perhaps explains the findings from my own company's research in Ireland about attitudes towards immigrants. Our surveys consistently show more negative attitudes about immigration among native Irish females than males. I assumed it was partly Irish mothers worried about employment prospects for their children - though younger women without children were nearly as negative.
Interesting - now I'll have to test the hypothesis by somehow framing a survey question that asks about looks and mate competition ...
Posted by: Gerard O'Neill at Jul 17, 2009 10:54:08 AM
Male status is also tied to being confident and at home in his surroundings, something that immigration disrupts at least temporarily.
Posted by: PeterW at Jul 17, 2009 11:01:19 AM
I'd argue that male immigrants to the west substantially increase their social status --- especially when compared to males back home. Hence chain migration.
Posted by: charlie at Jul 17, 2009 11:06:04 AM
I think far more important than this kind of folk-Darwinism model are cultural issues. For one, men are much more willing than women to class down in marriage. So to the extent that immigrants tend to be lower social class than the native-born this tendency will make it easier for female migrants to marry than male migrants.
Posted by: Gabriel Rossman at Jul 17, 2009 11:33:01 AM
When the man goes back to his community after a few years, regardless of whether it's permanent or just to visit family, he benefits from the Conquering Hero syndrome. He's now wealthier than most of the people there, he's picked up some of the sophisticated ways of the bigger city/more westernized city he worked in, and he's oozing with confidence. That's where he gets his mating advantage.
Posted by: bob paulson at Jul 17, 2009 11:38:59 AM
The status of the male immigrant might not transfer to the native population like a female immigrant's might.
But the male immigrant status may go up among the people he left behind (now wealthier, demonstrates drive).
And the status of the male immigrant may transfer well within the group of immigrants in the new country.
Posted by: John at Jul 17, 2009 11:43:57 AM
As long as you think that mating is a reason to emigrate
Posted by: CarlosH at Jul 17, 2009 11:49:33 AM
Would Evelyn Waugh have asquiesed in describing Sebastian Flyte as "an unusual commentator"? Flyte's flow of observations was unstoppable, if untrite, unconstrained and "incorrect".
Posted by: Diversity at Jul 17, 2009 11:51:54 AM
Yes, clearly the women in the receiving country should be so frightened of the competition for the national males, they'll be driven to forget any other factors or politics when considering immigration issues. Because women are clearly locked in combat with one another constantly for a better and better husband. There are no women who's economic class excludes them from interacting with immigrants, no cities with segregated neighborhoods to keep groups with different national origins apart, and no other factors for immigration than mating, especially for women, who can only gain anything through marriage, but only if they prove their worth by being pretty. And, least of all, there are no gay men or women in the receiving country or who immigrate.
Congratulations on this post's thinly veiled sexism, heterosexism, and lookism, brought up via a link overwrought with straight up misogyny. This is lazy economics, which fine for a short post to start discussion, but not when it's based on down right offensive preconceptions.
Posted by: angie at Jul 17, 2009 12:02:37 PM
The problem with this analysis is that those males most motivated to emigrate are those who have low status in their original countries but believe they have the capability to achieve higher status in the new country. And chances are, too, that the country they are emigrating to is less traditional and class-bound than their home country -- in the new country, nobody knows (or cares) who their (low status) relatives may have been. For these reasons, I'd expect male immigrants to achieve higher status in their new countries than they would have staying in their old ones.
Posted by: Slocum at Jul 17, 2009 12:03:02 PM
This is so misguided, for many reasons stated above, among others. Makes me wonder a little less how the economists and economics-minded of the world led us into the second dark age. They, as a group, are just not very clever.
Posted by: Chad at Jul 17, 2009 12:06:31 PM
I agree with the chain migration arguments above, but add that if someone views that their status doesn't immigrate with them, they are likely to stay behind, while someone who views a chance for increasing their status is more likely to move, and to take actions that increase their status in the new country.
I'd also argue that a woman with beauty can succeed on that beauty (Ceteris paribus) just as well at home, right? so why bother to emigrate? While the woman without beauty is going to need something else to succeed, so she might as well try her luck elsewhere.
Posted by: allison at Jul 17, 2009 12:16:52 PM
Both Men and women in America have to worry about marrying immigrants. Easy citizenship in the U.S. is a coveted commodity. In California the trend is for oriental women immigrants to marry well-to-do white males. They say it's because oriental men are cruel to their wives but after a few years they depart from the marriage as U.S. citizen with a time honored American tradition...alimoney. Many then gravitate to the oriental man with a new found freedom. On the other hand immigation makes this country great so... you have to take the good with the bad.
Posted by: Richard at Jul 17, 2009 12:21:37 PM
I think this hints at inbuilt bias in the US(because theyre greatest etc!) towards assuming immigration is all pull rather than push. Historicaly most immigration was fueled by lack of prospects at home rather than increased prospects abroad. Typified by eldest son remaining at home on the farm etc and younger ones getting the boat. Similarly this would lead to the more attractive/elegable females marrying localy and the remainder leaving. A quick historical plot of e.g. Irish GDP and net immigration would show its push driven. (the chosen destination would then be pull driven but this is second order)
Posted by: mrB at Jul 17, 2009 12:34:30 PM
Floccina, in matrimonial advertising, the advertisers, who are parents, like to position young ladies as "traditional" which probably means old country habits in matters of traditional cooking, housework, child care, and conversation habits.
bob paulson, the immigrant man is often, in effect, carrying a blank Green Card in his pocket, ready to fill in his wife's name -- which makes him as good-looking as the USA.
Posted by: Don Marti at Jul 17, 2009 12:36:29 PM
Congratulations on this post's thinly veiled sexism, heterosexism, and lookism, brought up via a link overwrought with straight up misogyny. This is lazy economics, which fine for a short post to start discussion, but not when it's based on down right offensive preconceptions.
Ceteris parabis, angie.
Posted by: SUR at Jul 17, 2009 12:47:00 PM
This depends a lot on culture. Northern European males have no trouble finding willing female mates in the US. The same applies to french women in the US. However american women are the ones that have no trouble finding willing mates in France.
Posted by: Doc Merlin at Jul 17, 2009 12:58:52 PM
Are city girls prettier the country girls? Are the returns on pretty, in terms of potential income, greater in cities.
Were girls in the frontier prettier then girls back east? Doesn't seem to have been the case.
Doesn't pretty hold an advantage in both locations? Why should the returns on looks increase in the new location?
Perhaps if larger numbers of males migrate out of the home country, the pretty girls may see a drop in their value depending on their cross elasticity with less attractive girls.
Immigrant females historically have been more likely to become prostitutes, especially when they lack informal support networks. Is that a function of looks, pretty migrants are more actively recruited?
Female Irish immigrants found it much easier to fit into upper income society, but as domestics not wives. Like African American female workers, they were more accepted by the larger society.
Do attractive women of color have an easier time marrying across color lines. I would think so. Is that seen by pretty women as a big advantage,
If women are moving from a more class conscience society to a more open society, perhaps looks alone can offer returns that the home country fails to offer.
But this is all wild theories without a lot of substance.
Posted by: DanC at Jul 17, 2009 1:12:04 PM
@SUR: Ceteris parabus(?) indeed. You make a valid, though wrongly spelled, argument.
Posted by: JSK at Jul 17, 2009 1:14:54 PM
From a public choice point of view, the women in the country receiving the immigrants should be more suspicious of liberal immigration policies than should be the men in the receiving country.
There are occasional attacks on the mail-order bride business. I haven't seen statistics myself (don't know where to locate them), but I've heard that the divorce rates are much lower between for U.S. male/ foreign wife marriages.
Posted by: 8 at Jul 17, 2009 1:16:42 PM
Angie: Let's be specific:
1) Are you arguing that men don't factor looks as a primary criterion for mate selection, that women are too ignorant to know this, or that women are too concerned with other matters to act based on this knowledge?
2) Are you arguing that women don't factor status as a primary criterion for mate selection, that men have not noticed this, or that men are too docile to act based on this knowledge?
There is a tremendous difference between honest observations of differences (men mate for looks, women for status, and that their opposites know & respond accordingly), and presuppositions. Science is entirely about honest observations and honest discussions. Nowhere in this discussion has anyone suggested or claimed that these criteria are even used by every member of the population. No one prefaces each use of the term "women" or "men" with "most" because it is clumsy and error prone--and we consider each other to be adult enough to understand the context of the discussion.
Genuine bias almost always reveals itself in language along the lines of the provocative terms I used above. Since confirmation bias means that we tend to find that which we seek, I recommend seeking friends instead of enemies.
Posted by: Right Wing-nut at Jul 17, 2009 1:21:36 PM
This is an application of the so called 'Roy Model' of migration. It is not so much that pretty girls should emigrate as people whose particular traits earn a relatively higher rate elsewhere who migrate. For example, high human capital people migrate from places that tax income heavily (e.g., Scandinavia). individuals with low human capital migrate from places where the return to education is low (e.g., Mexico). More to the point, there is little migration to the US by poor Scandinavians or rich Mexicans.
So where is the return to beauty highest or lowest? High as a starlet or model in NY, LA, Milan or Paris. High as eye candy or a groupie in Miami or Rio? Definitely lowest in the more rural provinces (e.g., Sicily or Kansas).
Posted by: MW at Jul 17, 2009 1:26:23 PM
