The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World

"Justin Wolfers comments, 'We know there exists something called an optimal divorce rate, and we're 100 per cent sure it isn't zero.'

Only an economist could put it like that, but he has a point. Marriage is an uncertain step and sometimes couples find that they made the wrong choice. Earlier in the chapter I compared finding a partner to finding a job. Returning to that analogy, we know that a job market where nobody could quit or be fired would not work very well: too many people would find themselves trapped in jobs they were incompetent to do or unhappy to do. A marriage market is not so terribly different.

Some people long for a return to the stable, traditional marriages of the 1950s, even if that means a firmer division of labour between the sexes again. They might do well to remember what Adam Smith wrote about the excessive division of labour: 'The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations ... has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He ... generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.'

Smith's argument applies just as well to ironing and baking cakes, his use of the male pronoun notwithstanding. Division of labour creates wealth but can sap our lives of variety. The serious entry of married women into the workforce has meant that they spend a little less time baking, and perhaps also that their husbands spend a little more time with the children. It has empowered women to leave marriages that are not working, making them happier and safer from abuse. It has truly been a revolution, and the price of that revolution is more divorce and less marriage. That price is very real - but it is almost certainly a price worth paying."

... The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, Tim Harford