An academic study came out suggesting that men are less responsible with their finances when they live in an area with a male biased sex ratio (more men than women). The article is called The Financial Consequences of Too Many Men: Sex Ratio Effects on Saving, Borrowing, and Spending (from the journal of Personality & Social Psychology January 2012).  What the article comes down to is men spend more money when women are scarce. Now I’m sure the ladies love hearing stuff like this because it makes them feel special, and in all honesty it should. It shows that we need you, and are willing to go through extraordinary measures to get you.

When I first started reading this article I didn’t buy it. I always seemed to me that I spend way more money having a girlfriend then I would if I didn’t. All the dinners for two,  the vacations for two, and even filling up two gas tanks. No, this article had to be wrong. If men spend more money when women aren’t around then what are they spending it on?

As I read further, the picture began to fill itself in. Every man wants a woman. When there are more men than women it makes matching of partners impossible. Every man wants a woman, but they all can’t have one. So what do we as men do? Well, thousands of years ago we probably would have ran around beating our chests and killing each other to find out who’s the strongest. Since we can’t do that anymore (and women have more say in the matter), we go out and spend money to try and lure women into choosing us.

As it turns out, the more male biased the sex ratio, the more money women are expecting men to spend on them. If you can’t take them to a nice dinner and buy them expensive gifts they will find someone who can (I realize not all women are like this). So to prevent that from happening what do we do? We take on debt. So not only are we spending more but we also have more debt, and with more debt comes less savings; However, when the tides have turned (and there are more women than men), men spend less on their women.

I think this article is interesting because it shows us that there are underlying issues that affect our finances that we might not even think about. They use an example of two cities that are located close together, but their finances are completely different. The city that has more debt is the one with a male biased sex ratio. It’s an issue most of us would never have even thought about, but it seems like it could have a substantial impact. That’s why the study of psychology, sociology, and finance mixed together is so great. Have any of you heard about other psychological/sociological issues affect finances (I’m always looking for some good reading materials)?