Over at Judith Warner's Times Select blog, she raises an interesting point. Call it reverse-Dowdism:
The phenomenon of Type S men (economists, mathematicians, rocket scientists) marrying their female equivalents is a relatively recent phenomenon. Men didn't generally, in the past, seek to marry someone just like them. (“Men don't want an intellectual sparring partner,” my father, born in 1917, was known to say — to me — as late as 1987.)
Your typical economics professor, your typical neurosurgeon, your typical chess grandmaster, just one generation ago, wasn't typically married to a colleague or competitor.
This is why I was so suspicious of Dowd's theories. I specifically seek out accomplished, intelligent women to date. When my friends and I compare notes at week's end, more plaudits are given when the girls are impressive than when they're hot. I became extra-infatuated with my first girlfriend when she used a word I didn't know (phylogeny, as I recall), and I still weed folks out by way of a quasi-intellectually elitist checklist, though what's on it remains proprietary information. That's not to make myself sound like too much of a platonic dater, but these things certainly factor into the equation, and they do so, in contrast to Dowd, in a positive direction.
But I'm not sure where this trend actually leads. Intelligence is only somewhat heritable, and even then it mutates in unexpected ways while traveling down genetic pathways. I assume these pairings lead to higher income concentrations, but then again, knowledge workers aren't necessarily highly paid, and it's not clear, at least to me, that these traits and choices remain prevalent throughout the upper echelons of the business world. So I'm not sure of the effects, but it's interesting stuff to think about.
