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Comment by rustynails | Hacker News Reader

According to Wikipedia, for high income earners, the divorce rate after 10 years is 23%... Or about 1 in 4. If I understand correctly, the idea is that the separation should be equitable (which makes sense as you were building a life together). However, this varies if there are kids involved.

I fully support this if it works both ways, ie. Regardless of gender.

You are either surrounded by friends with low income (who divorce at 44%), or You are suffering confirmation bias.

None of my friends have divorced - but that's luck more than anything else.

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> I fully support this if it works both ways, ie. Regardless of gender.

This will not be equitable both ways, since women elect to marry men who make more than them more often than the reverse. This NPR program (http://www.npr.org/2015/02/08/384695833/what-happens-when-wi...) says that the percentage of wives who earn more than husbands is ~38%, which I guess is an encouraging trend though.

> You are either surrounded by friends with low income (who divorce at 44%)

I specifically said that they stay in their marriages, (albeit unhappy), which is exactly the point. Low income marriages are easier to dissolve, it's harder when you have half a million in the bank.

> since women elect to marry men who make more than them more often than the reverse

That's mostly a function of income disparity, not of personal choice.

A majority of the income disparity is due to choice of field to work in - a personal choice. Primary education pays less than software development. The first is staffed primarily by women, the second men.

There are no laws or practices in place that make these choices mandatory, and men who enter education face as many cultural hurdles as women who enter tech - for the same reasons: their gender.

That said, even within an industry there is still a disparity, between 3-10%. This still needs to be fixed.

Should individuals be punished for income disparity that is a larger function of society?

Imagine this in the context of a business relationship. You put $200k into the business every year, your (female) partner puts in $60k. If for some reason after 10 years the business goes south, will the fairest way to distribute the resulting assets and liabilities be in a 50:50 ratio because there is an income disparity in the broader society?

[Admittedly my analogy is imperfect, but hopefully there's a point in there.]

What you are in effect saying is that when 'only' 1 in 4 men get robbed in divorce court, have their children stolen, have their human rights trampled upon ... it's OK.

Thanks for telling us.

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