A Bargaining Approach to Marriage and the Sexual Division of Labor For: Human Nature

Children may be viewed as public goods where both parents equally benefit genetically yet one parent often pays a greater cost and invests more heavily than the other. Investment decisions by marriage partners will be affected by their relative bargaining power, which is impacted by the feasibility of outside options and the supply and demand of unique sets of skills, abilities and traits that partners possess. We describe a micro-economic framework for understanding investment decisions in order to address questions concerning potential conflicts of interest over types and amount of work effort displayed among married men and women in non-market societies. While gains and costs of marriage may not be spread equally among marriage partners, marriage is still a favorable, efficient outcome under a wide range of conditions. This framework subsumes both cooperative and conflictive views on the sexual division of labor. We apply these concepts to test a series of hypotheses concerning marriage markets, assortative mating, and men’s labor motivations among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia.