Article Critique
Summary and Analysis
The relationship between marriage and professional success has the same problems when it comes to causality as the age-old debate about the chicken and the egg. Generally, research has shown that, on the whole, married men earn between 10 and 40 percent more than their single counterparts (Cornaglia and Feldman). One of the reasons for this may be what is known as endogenous selection – for example, there may be other factors that explain both success in the workplace and in finding (and retaining) a marriage partner. Also, the professional success may actually explain the marital success, instead of vice versa – after all, the notion that women look for people who are professionally successful when choosing a partner has long been an established cliché about relationships. Still, though, there may be a connection between marital status and salary: there may be employers that look at married men and consider them to be more stable, or possibly more available for work tasks, as married men, at least ostensibly, should not have to spend as much time on household tasks, since they have a marital partner to help in that area. This freedom from concerns at home can make married men more productive in the office. Cornaglia and Feldman’s paper seeks to determine whether or not such a link between marriage and salary exists. Their paper looks at professional baseball players, using productivity measures that are objective. Because the productivity of a baseball player is directly measured in extremely objective terms (including the ones that you can find on the back of a baseball card), the authors of this study suggest that it is a uniquely suitable profession to test the effects of marriage on productivity. Due to the changes in contract rules in 1975, the effect of marriage on salary has dissipated; however, it is still possible to measure productivity with respect to marriage (Cornaglia and Feldman).
Cornaglia and Feldman’s article takes a sample of baseball players from 1871 – 2007; in their conclusions, they find a positive correlation, or a “marriage premium,” that suggests that marriage does boost productivity. When controlling for player experience and age, the correlation was particularly strong in the top third of productive players; for players of lesser ability, the correlation was not nearly as strong. Using a variety of metrics, they conclude that marriage positively affects performance variance, and that the players at the higher end of the productivity spectrum are more effective at minimizing the gap between the revenue they bring in and their wages, known as the economic rent (Cornaglia and Feldman).
There are two concepts in this paper that deserve some detail in their treatment. The first was the major change in contract law that affected all baseball players in 1975. Before that year, there was a powerful “reserve clause” that tied each player to the original team that signed him. The team controlled the amount of money it would pay each player at the point of renewing his contract. Litigation filed by player Curt Flood led to the abolition of the reserve clause and the institution of free agency, which let players head to the open market with their talents at the end of each contract (Andrecheck). Because of this, it was not until 1975 that player salaries could be said to move naturally, according to the forces of the market. Before 1975, other variables, such as the ability (or desire) of each owner to pay a particular salary level, or the other salaries on the team, played a much more significant factor. While there is now a “salary cap” in baseball, and teams over that amount have to pay a luxury tax, that has not stopped some of the more affluent clubs (see: New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies) from signing up the talent at top dollar. Other teams, with fewer total dollars to spend, will often tie up a lot of their money on one free agent, hoping to build revenues through ticket sales based on that one name (see: Detroit’s recent signing of Prince Fielder; the Rangers’ moronic signing of Alex Rodriguez). The bottom line, though, is that salaries can be more fluid now, in the post-1975 area.
A second factor worth mentioning is the value that a wife can bring to a player’s situation. Indirect investments include what Cornaglia and Feldman describe as the wife’s ability “to provide her husband with uncluttered time” (8). Direct investments include ways in which a wife “may impact her husband’s popularity and visibility through public image” (8). As major league pitcher Kris Benson’s wife has shown (not to mention Kris Humphries’ ex-wife), the effects of this investment can be both positive and negative. The direct activities can contribute more to the dollar value of a husband’s contract, as Cornaglia and Feldman argue, but the indirect activities can contribute more abstractly to the overall productivity.
There are several reasons why this correlation makes sense, but few of them have to do with a link that begins with marital status and ends with productivity, particularly with baseball players. For example, one reason that some thinkers suggest that this link exists is that married men have more time to focus on their jobs, because they are not distracted by household tasks to the degree that single men are. However, the vast majority of baseball players spend at least half of their seasons in hotels, on the road; those who have signed a last-minute free agency contract and moved to join their new team may have a house in one state, an apartment in the home city of their new team, and then a series of hotels for road games. Whether they are single or not, they are extremely unlikely to have to face household tasks that would distract them from their baseball performance, as they are likely to pay people to attend to those tasks for them.
Also, the lifestyle question comes into play. Again, by spending so much time on the road, baseball players have far more time away from home than their cohorts outside of professional sports. While there are other professions that involve a similar amount of travel, few of them offer as much free time when away from home. A sales professional or an engineer may spend a week away from home at a conference, but he isn’t likely to be working primarily at night, for a few hours, with an “off day” often built into the middle of the trip. As a result, these other professionals experience far less of the leisure that comes with travel for professional athletes. Because professional baseball players spend so much time on the road, the lifestyles of married and single players can look very similar – which brings into question why married players would receive a premium that is caused by that marital status.
There is also no conclusive discussion about talent in Cornaglia and Feldman’s analysis. Many talented people, in a variety of fields, have struggled to maintain relationships of a personal nature, despite their vast abilities in their area of talent. In fact, the growing individualism in our culture means that the development of talent can actually work against the maintenance of a solid marriage. According to David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, “people want more space to develop their own individual talents. They want more flexibility to explore their own interest and develop their own identities, lifestyles and capacities. They are more impatient with situations that they find stifling.” People with talent, who have achieved success, can build positive networks in society – and then return home to their apartment to recharge at night. This does mean that those people without talents tend to feel lonely and depressed, because they are not building those types of networks; it also means, though, that marriage is not necessarily an objective for the highly talented; instead, they may find actualization through greater achievement. Think about it – hitters that can spend more time watching film and practicing their swing are more likely to be productive. If they have a wife and children, they will have demands on their time that single hitters will not have. Because baseball players who are not productive do not get to stay in the major leagues, because of the intense competition that goes into filling rosters, maintaining their talent is a top priority. The best hitters, one might argue, would want to remain single.
Looking at Cornaglia and Feldman’s analysis of OPS gives perhaps the most instructive instance of the problems with this paper. They note that marriage has a negative effect on the coefficient of variation for low ability players, no significant effect for average players, and a positive effect for high ability players. They admit that “marriage interferes periodically with the performance of elite level athletes” (31). Because the effect shifts depending on the quality of player productivity, it is problematic to assert a consistent relationship between marital status and productivity.
Conclusions
While this is an interesting topic to bandy about, particularly with regard to gender studies, it just doesn’t make any verifiable sense to connect marriage to wages or productivity, in any profession. The variables that contribute to maintaining a marriage are often counter to those that go along with professional success. In a marriage, one must show significant amounts of patience and understanding; in the business world, one must often act quickly and decisively and be willing to eliminate the competition. In baseball, the hours of practice that go into maintaining superior pitching, hitting and fielding skills run counter to the nurturing that is part of maintaining a strong family. Because the causality can also run from success in business to finding a marriage partner, instead of in the other direction, and because underlying variables can color both accomplishments in the workplace as well as at home, further study in this area would be difficult to justify.
Works Cited
Andrecheck, Sky. “The Case for the Reserve Clause.” CNNSI 14 January 2010. Web. Retrieved 23
February 2012 from
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/sky_andrecheck/01/14/andrecheck.free.agency/
index.html
Brooks, David. “The Talent Society.” New York Times 21 February 2012, A25.
Cornaglia, Francesca, and Feldman, Naomi. “Productivity, Wages and Marriage: The Case of
Major League Baseball.” IZA DP No. 5695. May 2011.
