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> A dual income couple can tolerate more risk, but in my experience they are unwilling. After marriage, a couple's risk tolerance skews a lot closer to a woman'

> A dual income couple can tolerate more risk, but in my experience they are unwilling. After marriage, a couple's risk tolerance skews a lot closer to a woman's risk tolerance than to a man's. How is someone's gender in any way relevant to their financial risk tolerance?

yummyfajitas 11y ago
The mechanisms are minimally known (it's believed to be linked to testosterone), but lower female risk tolerance is fairly well established. See this report and the sources it cites: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full And interestingly, this study was just posted here today, showing that testosterone levels fall in married men: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483
- lambdaelite 11y ago
  I think caution is advised at applying these studies broadly, as you are doing. Not only are they done on WEIRD populations, but a limited subset of that grouping.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    We are discussing the career habits of WEIRD populations, right? The same pattern holds anecdotally in many other cultures I'm familiar with (Indian, southern African). Do you have any anecdotes or other evidence suggesting women are equally or more risk averse than men?
    - lambdaelite 11y ago
      Anecdotes? Sure. My wife loves to trade options. I generally avoid them, except for buy-writes. Across investments, she enjoys taking higher risk positions than I. I can't say that gender doesn't play a role, and it would make sense if gender were a factor, but I don't see how it could be anything close to a dominant factor.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        By "anecdote", I meant "a culture or subgroup where women are reputed to be more risk taking than men", not "an individual example". No one disputes that individual examples can probably be found in any culture, and their existence doesn't contradict my claim. ...I don't see how it could be anything close to a dominant factor. Suppose it were a dominant factor. How would the world be drastically different than it is today?

yummyfajitas 11y ago

The mechanisms are minimally known (it's believed to be linked to testosterone), but lower female risk tolerance is fairly well established. See this report and the sources it cites: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full And interestingly, this study was just posted here today, showing that testosterone levels fall in married men: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483

lambdaelite 11y ago
I think caution is advised at applying these studies broadly, as you are doing. Not only are they done on WEIRD populations, but a limited subset of that grouping.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  We are discussing the career habits of WEIRD populations, right? The same pattern holds anecdotally in many other cultures I'm familiar with (Indian, southern African). Do you have any anecdotes or other evidence suggesting women are equally or more risk averse than men?
  - lambdaelite 11y ago
    Anecdotes? Sure. My wife loves to trade options. I generally avoid them, except for buy-writes. Across investments, she enjoys taking higher risk positions than I. I can't say that gender doesn't play a role, and it would make sense if gender were a factor, but I don't see how it could be anything close to a dominant factor.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      By "anecdote", I meant "a culture or subgroup where women are reputed to be more risk taking than men", not "an individual example". No one disputes that individual examples can probably be found in any culture, and their existence doesn't contradict my claim. ...I don't see how it could be anything close to a dominant factor. Suppose it were a dominant factor. How would the world be drastically different than it is today?