Abstract
The empirical results for the economic variables presented by Fair (J Political Econ 86(1):45–61, 1978) in his seminal study of extramarital affairs are puzzling within his household allocation of time framework. In particular, the theory is unable to accommodate readily the opposite signs for occupation (positive) and education (negative), assuming the wage rate is directly correlated with both variables. This paper provides a new interpretation of Fair’s estimates that accounts for the unexpected education result in terms of the association between schooling and the discount factor applied to expected future sanctions for sexual cheating. Three data sets from the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom are investigated to check the robustness of the partial correlations between infidelity and economic incentives. Taken together, the results across different countries and infidelity measures are substantially in agreement, especially for men. In a novel contribution, this study distinguishes between one off encounters, and irregular and regular forms of infidelity and finds that these are differentially related to occupation and education, consistent with theoretical predictions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Of course, models of illegitimate activity and sanctions can also be constructed within an allocation of time framework. There is clearly scope to extend Fair’s model itself to accommodate the negative education effect.
Moreover, insofar as education increases risk aversion, the possibility of future sanctions will have a greater deterrent effect. For simplicity, risk neutrality is assumed throughout.
Fair also specified a variable for husband’s occupation which was not statistically significant. For ease of comparison with other data sets that do not record spousal occupation, the variable is also excluded from estimation using Fair’s data.
An attempt was made to exploit the information on the respondent’s awareness of a partner’s unfaithfulness in the German sample by estimating Probit specifications for partner cheating. Since the question was only asked of those whose relationship remained intact, just 0.6% of men reported that their partner had cheated in the past year and 1% in the case of women. Unfortunately, the estimation results were very imprecisely determined.
The first NATSAL survey was investigated by Cameron (2002) based on Fair’s time allocation model.
The NATSAL questionnaire provides duration data on the length of time between the beginning and end of the previous three sexual relationships. However, application of survival analysis to investigate the determinants of the duration of infidelity is frustrated by inherent difficulties of using timing data to define what counts as a spell of infidelity. A brief fling with an old flame encountered again many years later would be wrongly classified as an apparently long duration, though irregular, concurrent relationship in terms of the spell between first and last sex with this former partner. In the absence of explicit frequency data on sexual contact with each partner, the approach is constrained here to consider only a division of infidelity into broadly specified cheating classes.
References
Akerlof, G. A., Yellen, J. L., & Katz, M. L. (1996). An analysis of out-of-wedlock childbearing in the United States. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 111(2), 277–317.
Allen, D., & Brinig, M. (1998). Sex, property rights and divorce. European Journal of Law and Economics, 5, 211–233.
Bloemen, H. G., Pasqua, S., & Stancanelli, E. G. F. (2010). An empirical analysis of the time allocation of Italian couples: are they responsive? Review of the Economics of the Household, 8, 345–369.
Blow, A. J., & Hartnett, K. (2005). Infidelity in committed relationships I: a methodological review. Journal of Marital & Family Therapy, 31(2), 183–216.
Bruze, G., Svarer, M., & Weiss, Y. (2012). The dynamics of marriage and divorce. IZA Discussion Paper 6379.
Cameron, S. (2002). The economics of partner out trading in sexual markets. Journal of Bioeconomics, 4, 195–222.
Chernozhukov, V., & Hong, H. (2002). Three-step censored quantile regression and extramarital affairs. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 97, 872–882.
Cox, D. (2008). The evolutionary biology and economics of sexual behavior and infidelity. Preliminary draft, Department of Economics, Boston College.
Elmslie, B., & Tebaldi, E. (2008). So, what did you do last night? The economics of infidelity. Kyklos, 61(3), 391–410.
Erens, B., McManus, S., Field, J., Korovessis, C., Johnson, A., Fenton, K., et al. (2001). National survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles II: Technical report. London: National Centre for Social Research.
Fair, R. (1978). A theory of extramarital affairs. Journal of Political Economy, 86(1), 45–61.
Friehe, T. (2008). Optimal sanctions and endogeneity of differences in detection probabilities. International Review of Law and Economics, 28, 150–155.
Ganzeboom, H. B. G., De Graaf, P. M., & Treiman, D. J. (1992). A standard international socio-economic index of occupational status. Social Science Research, 21, 1–56.
Ganzeboom, H. B. G., & Treiman, D. J. (2011). International stratification and mobility file: Conversion tools. Amsterdam: Department of Social Research Methodology. http://www.harryganzeboom.nl/ismf/index.htm.
Grossbard-Shechtman, S. (1993). On the economics of marriage. A theory of marriage, labor, and divorce. Boulder, Co: Westview Press.
Gustafsson, S., & Worku, S. (2005). Assortative mating by education and postponement of couple formation and first birth in Britain and Sweden. Review of Economics of the Household, 3, 91–113.
Hollingshead, A. B. (1957). Two factor index of social position, unpublished mimeo. New Haven: Yale University.
Huinink, J., Brüderl, J., Nauck, B., Walper, S., Castiglioni, L., & Feldhaus, M. (2011). Panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam): Conceptual framework and design. Zeitschrift für Familienforschung, 23, 77–101.
Iversen, T., & Rosenbluth, F. (2006). The political economy of gender: Explaining cross national variation in the gender division of labor and the gender voting gap. American Journal of Political Science, 50(1), 1–19.
Li, Q., & Racine, J. (2004). Predictor relevance and extramarital affairs. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 19, 533–535.
Liu, X. (2008). An effective punishment scheme to reduce extramarital affairs: An economic approach. European Journal of Law and Economics, 25, 167–175.
Lochner, L., & Moretti, E. (2004). The effect of education on crime: Evidence from prison inmates, arrests, and self-reports. American Economic Review, 94, 155–189.
McKinnish, T. G. (2007). Sexually-integrated workplaces and divorce: Another form of on-the-job search. Journal of Human Resources, 42(2), 331–352.
Nakao, K., & Treas, J. (1992). The 1989 socioeconomic index of occupations: Construction from the 1989 occupational prestige scores. GSS Methodological Report No. 74. Chicago: NORC.
Pagan, A., & Vella, F. (1989). Diagnostic tests for models based on individual data: A survey. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 4, S29–S59.
Posner, R. A. (1992). Sex and reason. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Rasmusen, E. (2002). An economic approach to adultery law. In A. W. Dnes & R. E. Rowthorn (Eds.), The law and economics of marriage and divorce (pp. 70–91). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, D. (2005). Fundamentals of human mating strategies. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 258–291). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Wang, W. (1997). Tobit analysis with a natural non-response rate. Applied Economics Letters, 4, 191–194.
Wax, A. (2011). Diverging family structure and ‘rational’ behavior: The decline in marriage as a disorder of choice. In L. R. Cohen & J. D. Wright (Eds.), Research handbook on the economics of family law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Wellings, K., Field, J., Johnson, A., & Wadsworth, J. (1994). Sexual behaviour in Britain: The national survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles. London: Penguin.
Wells, C. (2003). Retesting Fair’s (1978) model on infidelity. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 18, 237–239.
Yen, S. T. (1999). Nonparticipation and corner solution: Extramarital affairs reconsidered. Applied Economics Letters, 6, 443–445.
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the editor and two referees for helpful comments. The British data used in this paper were made available by the UK Data Archive and Catherine Mercer provided help with the variables. This paper also uses data from the first wave of the German Family Panel (pairfam) which is coordinated by Bernhard Nauck, Johannes Huinink, Josef Brüderl and Sabine Walper. The panel is funded as long-term program by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix: Variable definitions and descriptive statistics by data source
Appendix: Variable definitions and descriptive statistics by data source
The following variables definitions are common to all the tables in the appendix: (1) N is the sample size; (2) in estimation the binary dummy variable is set to one for respondents reporting infidelity (Unfaithful) and to zero otherwise (Faithful); (3) education is divided into four categories of attainment, namely: less than high school; high school; junior college; bachelor degree or higher; (4) age is measured in completed years; (5) kids is the number of dependent children in the household; (6) religiosity is measured on a four point ordinal scale of frequency of attendance at religious services where four is most frequent and one is least frequent; (7) standard deviations are only reported for continuous variables.
1.1 GSS 1991–2010 (Table 6)
The sample corresponds to that used for estimation of the specification reported in columns (3) and (4) of Table 2 for those ever married. The infidelity question asks whether a respondent has ever been unfaithful to a spouse. Occupation refers to the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status (ISEI-08) constructed by Ganzeboom and Treiman (2011) and matched to a respondent’s 1988 ISOC (International Standard Classification of Occupations) code. Cohort is year of birth. Urban is the log of the population size of the respondent’s location.
1.2 Pairfam 2008/9 (Table 7)
The infidelity question asks whether the respondent has been unfaithful to their partner in the past year. As with the GSS sample, occupation is measured using the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status (ISEI-08). It is only measured for those in work or vocational training. The education variables are derived from a pairfam generated measure of educational attainment based on the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED-97). The control for urban area is an indicator variable set to one if the respondent lives in a settlement with at least 50,000 residents, and set to zero otherwise. Nights away is measured as the proportion of nights spent away from home due to work in the past 3 months. Age at coresidence gives the age at which the respondent started living together with their current partner. Nonmarital cohabitation is a dummy variable set to one for those coresidential couples that are not legally married.
1.3 NATSAL 1999/2001 (Table 8)
Nights away is the proportion of the year spent away from home (number of nights/365), urban is a dummy variable set to one for those living in an urban or suburban area. % Female is the proportion of women in total employment across 60 sectors. It is constructed using Labor Force Survey employment data for December 2001 by gender and two digit Standard Industrial Classification (1992). This is matched to the SIC(92) code provided in the NATSAL data for each respondent. Age at first partnership is the age at which the respondent first entered a coresidential sexual partnership. Never married is a dummy variable set to one for those respondents who have never entered into formal marriage.
1.4 Infidelity Classes (Table 9)
Infidelity in the NATSAL data is divided into three classes according to whether the cheating is reported as regular (Affair) or irregular and whether the first occasion of cheating was also the last occasion. The latter condition defines a one night encounter. If the respondent reports more than form of infidelity with their three previous partners, the individual is allocated to the most time intensive category. Class mean gives the proportion of respondents in each infidelity class.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith, I. Reinterpreting the economics of extramarital affairs. Rev Econ Household 10, 319–343 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-012-9146-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-012-9146-9