Is money the key to a happy marriage?

Do women go for one’s looks or bank balance? is an age old question that still remains unanswered. But studies show that demand and supply equations inform gender equations as well.

IS IT true that looks matter when it comes to love? A study provides hard evidence to the suggestions that the fairer sex is attracted not to a man’s looks, but to his status, power and wealth.

According to a research conducted in 1909, when men are in short supply due to events such as wars, women are willing to settle for poorer partners of lesser social sway. However, when male population increases, women tend to turn fussy and go for the richest and most powerful men. This in turn, ‘radically reduces’ the marriage prospects of poor-off men.

As quoted by Dr Thomas Pollet, department of evolutionary psychology, University of Liverpool, “We show that if men are abundant, this will influence the market value of their desired traits, that is, women can demand more. This aspect, namely individual decision making as a function of the mating market (local abundance or scarcity), has been relatively neglected within the literature on human mate choice.”

According to the Pollet, when the sex ratio is equivalent, married men are inclined to have a little higher socio-economic status than unmarried men. “As the sex ratio augments, married men are expected to need up two or three times the socio-economic status of unmarried men,” he said.

Frank Pedersen of the University of Delaware confirmed the study in 1991, which concluded that sex percentage has a big impact on the marriage market.

“Thus, much about the varying culture of male and female behaviour across populations and across time could in slandered be clarified with orientation to the sex ratio,” said Pollet.

The question of whether looks matter when it comes to love is age old and still remains unanswered. But these studies has clearly recognised the more limited fact that sex ratio fluctuations in human beings can put one sex in the driving seat.