Divorce vs. Revenue & Class Musings

Unfortunately, I lost the reference, so I don't know what "upper class" means exactly, but let's use Murray's Belmont. In Belmont, only 15% of marriages end in divorce. Obvious explanation: the husbands are rich and prestigious. 

These statistics seem to be assiduous avoided recently. My google-fu can hardly find anything, so I assume it's become even more inegalitarian. When Reality consistently gives heretical answers, Reality is simply ignored.

There isn't exactly nothing, though.

https://flowingdata.com/2021/05/04/divorce-rates-and-income/

"An annual income of over $50,000 can decrease the risk of divorce by as much as 30% versus those with an income of under $25k." (Seems to be 30% relative.) https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/

Here are the 10 occupations with the lowest divorce rates:

• Actuaries — 17%
• Physical Scientists — 18.9%
• Medical and Life Scientists — 19.6%
• Clergy — 19.8%
• Software Developers –20.3%
• Physical Therapist — 20.7%
• Optometrists — 20.8%
• Chemical Engineers — 21.1%
• Directors of Religious Activities and Education — 21.3%
• Physicians and Surgeons — 21.8%

Apparently actuaries can calculate their divorce risk, thus avoiding risky marriages.

Next, "In fact, approximately 70% of marriages from the 1990s reached 15 years. Couples who married in the 2000s are divorcing even less." (Folk are not marrying at all instead of getting into doomed marriages.)

Today, the number of married, college-educated couples that split by the time they reached their seventh anniversary is 11%. 

Higher-status women dislike divorce more. Marry princesses, not whores. 

However, there seems to be a problem with billionaires. If you're obscenely rich, your divorce rate goes back up to the average of 50%. Or Forbes is committing fraud, which I can hardly rule out. "An analysis of U.S. divorce rates by Forbes revealed the country’s richest people divorce at a rate that hovers around 49% – right in line." https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/for-neither-richer-nor-poorer-divorcing-isnt-just-for-the-wealthy

Of course, they don't bother to look into it, because they're wisely afraid of the answers.

Why did Bezos and Gates get divorced? Because they're nerds.
They're nerds, plus the wives got fabulous cash prizes for the divorce. As your wealth increases, the temptation on your wife increases.
Perhaps this is part of why even rich Americans often live paycheque to paycheque? Why leave anything for the divorce? Just spend it now. Make her fully dependent on your ongoing salary. Plus inflation means you want to be underwater as much as possible. Have net liabilities, not net assets. Mortgage everything.

There's also being too high status. If your wife is keenly aware that you can do better, she will want to go, "You can't dump me, I'm leaving." The wife wants a man who is taller, but not nine feet tall. Smarter, but not a four standard deviation delta. Too much masculinity is too intimidating. Ultimately women need sex too, and won't get it if you dump all your cum into mistresses. Doesn't matter how high-status you are if you don't have to sleep with her. If you marry before you make your billions, it is likely you got the girl next door, not the marchioness that matches you. 

If you're Bezos and your wife divorces you, she may think she can come back to the table with all the billions she just stole to try to even the odds. Divorce for attention. Problem: high school prom queens would cheerfully offer no-strings-attached to Bezos. (Did Epstein's girls even really mind their jobs?) What would Bezos want with some postmenopausal hag he's barely talked to in years? If he wants some more billions he can just make some more billions.

I think it's mainly the nerd thing though. You can see the 600,000 dip, where they properly optimize cash+prestige. That's the cocktail party crowd, which (rightly) sees Bezos et al as gauche on his best day. "What? He has to work for a living? How droll." The reason the rate isn't down at 15% is because a pure revenue chart includes mid-level CEOs. The class we want to talk about uses CEOs as tools. "Chip chip lad, off with you now. You have money to make. Mine, specifically." You might make more money than them, but they can just decide not to come into "work" if they don't want to. Or quit whenever; they don't do it for the money. Most CEOs are still a kind of employee. Two weeks notice? Be happy if you're told at all and don't have to figure it out on your own. 

CEOs don't do it for the money either, technically, but Musk can't just quit Tesla for two years and then come back like nothing's happened. Put another way, CEOs show up in the news a lot. Board members, not so much. Financiers, even less. The money who the financiers are representing - never.