Marriage

===Social status and wealth===
Some people want to marry a person with higher or lower status than them. Others want to marry people who have similar status. In many societies, women marry men who are of higher social status.<ref>{{citation |title=Why Rational Choice Theory and Sociobiology Are Natural Allies |author=Stephen K. Sanderson |url=http://www.asanet.org/sectionevol/documents/news-fall10.pdf |journal=Evolution, Biology and Society |volume=7 |issue=1 |year=2010 |access-date=18 April 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150418164755/http://www.asanet.org/sectionevol/documents/news-fall10.pdf |archive-date=18 April 2015  }}</ref> There are marriages where each party has sought a partner of similar status. There are other marriages in which the man is older than the woman.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Lancaster, J.B. |author2=Altmann, J. |author3=Sherrod, L.R. |author4=Rossi, A. |year=2010 |title=Parenting Across the Life Span: Biosocial Dimensions |publisher=Aldine Transaction  |isbn=978-1-4128-4452-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PtJMNIrKpaYC}}</ref>

Some persons also wish to engage in transactional relationship for money rather than love (thus a type of marriage of convenience). Such people are sometimes referred to as [[gold digger]]s. [[Matrimonial regime|Separate property systems]] can however be used to prevent property of being passed on to partners after divorce or death.

Higher income men are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce. High income women are more likely to divorce.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hopcroft |first1=Rosemary L. |title=High income men have high value as long-term mates in the U.S. (abstract) |journal=[[Evolution and Human Behavior]] |date=April 2021 |volume=42 |issue=3 |doi=10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2021.03.004 |s2cid=233667442 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513821000222?dgcid=rss_sd_all |access-date=2021-03-26}}</ref>