"Ask the world how to teach people to live and die together!" In the eyes of economists, this statement is dizzy and has no information. Excuse me, are there really people who are committed to life and death? Of course, I can't say no, but it's pathetic. More importantly, for most people in society, love and marriage, like other human behaviors, do not aim at madness and search, nor do they "commit themselves to life and death". They have brought tangible benefits to people, so they should also be chosen rationally, which conforms to the rational analysis of economics. So, what kind of benefits do people want when they are in love and tied the knot? Marx did some analysis and thought that the purpose of "bearing offspring" was hidden behind the charming veil of love. In fact, in modern society, you can have children without getting married. Just get a glass tube. It doesn't have to cost much. Why do you have to resort to marriage to get around such a big bend? From the perspective of modern economics, marriage has "four advantages"-first, it can realize comparative interests and increasing income through division of labor. For example, if a woman is in charge and a man is outside, or a woman is outside and a man is inside, it is more efficient than everyone who studies both inside and outside. Second, provide mutual credit and coordinate the interests of human capital investment, such as one person working to support another person's education, and finally * * * enjoy happiness. Third, you can share family items, such as family happiness. In addition to each other's knowledge and wisdom, they can also be shared. Therefore, it is often found that the wife's education level rises, which helps to raise her husband's salary. Fourth, disaster prevention insurance, no one cares if you are sick. If you ask, in rural areas of India and China, daughters are usually married. Why? A reasonable explanation is to prevent the risk of crop failure more effectively. There are so many benefits of marriage, which can explain why most people choose "marriage" instead of "celibacy". So when is the best time to get married? There is no definitive conclusion. The purpose of people getting married is to get the most benefit from marriage. If marriage income exceeds single income, then people will choose to get married, otherwise they will be more willing to be single. Marriage is good, saving living expenses due to scale effect. Two people need two sets of kitchen utensils to live alone, and only one set after marriage. This is the "scale effect". Marriage also has costs, such as searching for information about marriage products, inviting guests to dinner, investing in lovers, paying dowry and shouldering responsibilities. People who want to search a lot of information in the market need to pay a price, such as spending money on experience. The most intuitive thing is that when you try to know whether a person can be a partner, you need to spend time in contact with him and invest in him. If the cost is high and exceeds the expected benefits of marriage, then the spouse may be more willing (or forced) to choose celibacy. There are more and more single people in modern society. There may be many reasons, but a very important reason is that modern people are very busy and the cost of searching for marriage information is very high. Moreover, the actual survey found that white-collar workers are more single than blue-collar workers and get married later. The reason is that white-collar workers are busier and have more opportunities to make money, so the cost of searching for marriage information is higher. Therefore, whether people are married or not, they will always weigh the cost and benefit of marriage. In the marriage market with free competition and complete information, everyone can find his best partner, so as to maximize his utility. But the assumptions of free competition and complete information often don't exist, so there is "doomed love" or unhappy marriage. In China's long feudal society, both parties to the marriage did not have the freedom to choose according to "parents' orders and matchmakers' words", and the reality of inequality between men and women destroyed fair trade, so the competition in the marriage market was destroyed and the marriage market was inefficient. Some interesting conclusions can be drawn by applying economic methods to the analysis of marriage problems. For example, generally speaking, the combination with better marriage quality is that both husband and wife have the same interests but each has his own strengths, because such a combination can give full play to their respective comparative advantages; Couples with similar interests and complementary skills will have worse marital quality. Of course, this is not absolute. The key is whether the husband and wife are suitable. Professor Zhang Junsen from the Department of Economics of the Chinese University of Hong Kong once made a quantitative analysis of marriage, and came to the conclusion that husband and wife are also positively correlated in complementary characteristics and negatively correlated in substitution characteristics.