Broken-windows fallacy, gay marriage edition (with updates)

Last updated on: May 30, 2014 at 7:51 pm by Jane the Actuary

Broken-windows fallacy, gay marriage edition (with updates) 2014-05-30T19:51:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Just a quick late-lunch comment on an article in today’s Tribune, “At dawn of same-sex marriage, wedding business is booming.” The article profiles wedding vendors expecting a boost in business due to the legalization of same-sex marriages — and there may be some reality behind the expectations, if there are significant numbers of couples for whom a non-legally-recognized commitment ceremony or a legal but deemed-inferior civil union didn’t merit a big celebration, or didn’t merit having at all, but a marriage does. But will gay wedding be a boon to the economy?

Here’s what the Trib says:

According to theWilliams Institute, a national think tank based at the University of California at Los Angeles, extending the right to marry to same-sex couples should generate up to $103 million in spending in the first three years of the law.

A study conducted by the group predicts that Illinois’ wedding business will see an increase by $74 million by 2017, and the state could see an increase of $29 million in tourism expenditures made by out-of-town guests by then.

The boost in wedding spending would generate about 281 jobs in the state, the study found.

Businesses are banking that same-sex wedding couples may even spend more on their weddings than heterosexual couples. Studies have found that gay couples have higher household income than heterosexual couples and that LGBT consumers are better at managing their money.

But isn’t this a variant on the Broken Windows Fallacy? (Wikipedia article here, to refresh your memory.)

Where, after all, will this money come from? Will these newlywed couples borrow? Will they spend their savings? (And, if so, will they do so prudently?) Will they take on overtime, moonlight, take on extra freelancing projects? Or will they just spend money that they would have spent otherwise, but just do so on a wedding, instead of new living room furniture, or a vacation, or a new car?

Here’s the link to the organization that’s making these calculations, the Williams Institute. So far as I can tell, they put out papers with the same methodology for every state for which it’s a topic under discussion. And this is the research arm of a law school, and the authors don’t appear to have any firm background in economic modelling, so their reports should not be given credence by reporters.

More thoughts: It occurs to me that I don’t actually know how people finance their weddings, in the present day. Periodically, you’ll read the latest results of a survey on the “official” cost of the average wedding — according to CNN, it’s now up to $30,000 — but I’ve never believed that this is particularly credible. Maybe this is, “of those couples who have a formal reception”? Surely a substantial number of couple have the sort of weddings I’ve been to on several occasions, with the reception consisting of a simple paper-plate meal in the church basement or VFW hall, right? (Or my uncle’s backyard BBQ wedding?) And surely to get to a figure as high as $30,000 on average, these on-the-cheap weddings, much less the “city hall + dinner out” wedding, are excluded?

In any event, for the full-blown expensive dress, dozen bridesmaids, formal reception, ice sculpture weddings: how are they financed? I suppose in the scenario in which mom & dad pay, they’ve ideally got enough savings to just withdraw the cash, but one reads that most of the time now, it’s the couple who pays — do they really have the savings? Do they take out loans? Max out the credit cards? Married readers, what did you do?

(Me? We were just leaving grad school — my parents gave us a check and my in-laws did, but ours was pretty cheap, anyway: I remember the wedding dress costing $500. The guest list was small, and the wedding itself as well as the reception was in the Sacred Heart Parish Center at Notre Dame (that is, not the Basilica, but the chapel and community room, respectively), so we didn’t have any costs for the facility, just the caterer. We even paid for the beer & wine on a “usage” basis rather than per person, per hour, because we knew our families weren’t heavy drinkers. Flowers came from Michaels and the grocery store floral department. We paid the photographer a flat fee for the photo-taking and the negatives, and put together our own albums afterwards. The grand total? No idea any longer, although I probably still have all the papers packed away in a box in the basement.)

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