Hypergamy

Tom Joseph ** Hypergamy ** **Hypergamy History** Hypergamy is a form of marriage in which a woman marries a man of high social status than her own, or better, than that of her family of orientation. In many circles the concept of hypergamy is also known as “marrying up.” As hypergamy, sometimes called hypergenation, involves an upward flow of women and affects the sex ratio of various groups in the whole societal system (Van Den Berghe, 1960). The ratio of legitimate males of a high caste or of high social standing is limited and the women attempts to attract the man with the most prestige. Hypergamy arises because women, as sellers of legitimacy, face an opportunity cost for participating in marriage markets, regardless of how men and women are specialized in the production of home goods and market goods (Saint-Paul, 2008). Hypergamy is socially more accepted and common form of mixed-class unions. Spousal gaps are not restricted to status. Throughout the world, men tend to marry younger women. In Asian and the Middle East, the average age gap for first marriages can range between four to seven years (Edlund, 1999).

**Hypergamy Concept** Hypergamy has been defined in many ways. Different definitions of hypergamy suggest that the cultural transmission of economic standing, channeled through nobility and other statusmarkers, should be taken into account in an analysis of the intergenerational transmission of inequality (Almenberg & Dreber, 2009). In many cases, a hypergamous relationship is decided by the parents of the sons or daughters. Determining if a husband and wife want a son or daughter takes into effect whether the parents want the daughter to grow up looking for and hopefully marrying an alpha male. Not all women need to end up at the bottom half of the social spectrum if parents prefer a daughter who could marry up to a son who would marry down (Edlund, 1999).

**Hypergamy Theory** //Alphas vs. Betas// (Saint-Paul, 2008): Intergenerational transmission of human capital with sexual reproduction, endogenous mating and household formation, and heritable genetic differences. Marriage markets are naturally hypergamous and a marriage is more likely to occur the higher the man’s human capital, and the lower the woman’s human capital. The reason is that the utility loss from marrying a beta man instead of an alpha man is not transferable. Therefore, the greater a woman’s human capital, the lower her marginal utility of consumption, and the larger the transfer that she must get from a man in order to be compensated for her foregone mating opportunities. The opposite logic is at work for men: the larger their human capital, the lower their marginal utility of consumption, and the greater their willingness to pay for legitimate children.

//“Love” Marriages//: Edlund and Lagerlof (2004) compare "love" marriages where there is a transfer from husband to wife, to "arranged" marriages where the transfer goes to the bride’s father. They argue that "love" marriages have better properties in terms of human and physical capital accumulation; the mechanism is quite different from the rest of the literature: parents do not care about their children’s human capital per se but do care about their marriageability, and thus under "love marriage" want to transfer resources to their sons to increase their chances of mating (Saint-Paul, 2008).

//Maximization of Status// (Van Den Berghe, 1960): Hypergenation will occur when it involves a gain of status for the woman and her children and no equal loss of status for the male partner. Under those conditions, hypergenation is a method whereby the ‘sum of status’ for any given couple and its offspring is maximized. However, this condition can only exist if the woman gains more status than the man loses.

//Nobility Theory//: Almenburg and Dreber (2009) conducted research to examine whether people are willing to trade wealth for status, by testing the hypothesis that the probability of “marrying up” in terms of wealth increases when an individual belongs to the nobility. If nobility bestows status, and if individuals value both status and material consumption, they expected an individual belonging to the nobility to attain a premium in the marriage market compared to a non-noble individual with otherwise identical characteristics. The mating patterns were consistent with comparisons between wealth and status.

//Black/White Intermarriage//: Interracial relationships emphasize that couples come together primarily because black men have a higher socioeconomic status and can marry a white woman of lower socioeconomic status, and thereby exchange his class standing for her socially defined “superior racial status”. Recent studies have also used the hypergamy argument to explain intermarriage. In a 1993 article titled “Trends in Black/White Intermarriage,” Matthijs Kalmijn found that racial caste prestige and socioeconomic prestige still function as substitutes in the selection process of mates for interracial marriages (Moore, 2008).

**Hypergamy in Popular Culture** Popular television dating shows like //The B////ach////elor// and //Rock of Love with Bret Michaels// are seen as current trends of hypergamous relationships. In both shows, the women attempt to win over the alpha male who is considered of higher social standing than all of the women. Hypergenation occurs in these shows due to the male’s option on who to pick to essentially marry. The opposite can be argued with shows like //Last Shot at Love with Tila Tequila// where the woman is considered the mate with the option and the contestants are men of lower social standing. As recent as 1994, Anna Nicole Smith was suspected of being in a hypergamous relationship with her then husband, 89 year old millionaire J. Howard Marshall II. The concept of a woman marrying up, no matter the age of the husband, was considered ill-conceived in the instance of the Smith/Howard relationship. Society viewed Smith as a “gold digger,” a widow in waiting to cash in on Marshall’s fortune when he passed away, while Smith consistently told the public she married Marshall because he was the man of her dreams and would be in love with him whether he had the massive amount of money or not. In popular culture, relationships with a hypergamous description are considered taboo topics due to role that assets and wealth play in determining the woman marrying the male.



Almenberg, J., & Dreber, A. (2009). Lady and the Trump: Status and Wealth in the Marriage Market. //Kyklos//, 62(2), 161-181. doi: [|10.1111/j.][|1467-6435] .2009.00429.x Black-White Intermarriage. (2008). **In** J. H. Moore (Ed.) //Encyclopedia of Race and Racism//, (Vol.1). (pp. 211-217) Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA Retrieved April 7, 2011, from Gale Virtual Reference Library via Gale: http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=GVRL&u=uiuc_uc Edlund, L. (Dec 1999). Son Preference, Sex Ratios, and Marriage Patterns. //Journal of Political Economy//, 107, 6. p.1275. Retrieved April 7, 2011, from Academic OneFile via Gale: http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=AONE&userGroupName=uiuc_uc From the Archives: Anna Nicole Smith Weds J. Howard Marshall II. (2007). //People.com.// http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1536410_20011436,00.html Van Den Berghe, P. L. (1960). Hypergamy, Hypergenation, and Miscegenation. //Human Relations.// 83 (13), 83-91. doi: [|10.1177/001872676001300106.x] Rock of Love on VH-1. (2007). //TVGuide.com//. http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/rock-love/photos/288971#29848 Saint-Paul, G. (2008). Genes, Legitimacy and Hypergamy: Another look at the economics of marriage. Retrieved April 7, 2011, from http://idei.fr/doc/wp/2008/genes.pdf
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