Walker joined Difficult Run as an editor in August 2013.
He graduated from the University of North Texas with an MBA in Strategic Management and a BBA in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management. He's currently a grad student in Government at Johns Hopkins University. He has been published in SquareTwo, BYU Studies Quarterly, Dialogue, Graziadio Business Review, and Economic Affairs. He also contributed to Julie Smith's (ed.) 'As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture'. His other online writing can be found at Worlds Without End and Times & Seasons. He lives in Denton, Texas, with his wife.
I watched Robert Redford’s film A River Runs Through It for the first time last week. The film was absolutely gorgeous to look at, though admittedly dull. However, the narration from portions of the original novella left me a lot to chew on and I ended up reading the story over the course of the following week. While there are many beautiful elements of the story, for my purposes, I couldn’t help but notice the underlying concept of the sacred in the mundane. Crafts and tasks, whether for hobbies or work, can be transformed into an art. And grace can be manifested through art.
This is the topic of my latest post at The Slow Hunch. Check it out.
Over at The New Republic, there was a small post praising former President Jimmy Carter for saving the beer industry via deregulation:
To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large beer makers. In 1979, Carter deregulated the beer industry, opening back up to craft brewers. As the chart below illustrates, this had a really amazing effect on the beer industry:
The increase in breweries over the past few decades is staggering. The industry has reached a milestone with over 2,700 breweries in the U.S. at the end of 2013 with 98% of these being small and independent craft breweries. This is the highest count in close to 140 years. As economist Mark Perry has noted, there has been a 2600% increase in US breweries largely because of craft breweries. Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association, also finds that “the presence of a strong craft industry has been great for the beer industry.” Between 2009 and 2013, the states with the strongest craft beer industries on average gained volume, while the majority of states lost volume. These craft breweries have also become widely dispersed within the US. While there is still plenty of room for growth, the dispersion is pretty extensive. “Long gone are the days where San Diego and Portland are hogging all the local breweries,” writes Watson. “There are 2,295 [Zip Code Tabulation Areas] that now have a brewery. They range in size from over 100,000 people to 10 (10 ZCTAs with fewer than 100 people have a brewery). Americans, whether they live in urban or rural areas, large towns or small, are increasingly being exposed to beer produced by a local brewer.” Furthermore, this increased competition has led to numerous choices for consumers. As Watson puts it,
Regardless of the optimal number of brands on a shelf, the innovation and entry of so many great new breweries can only be a good thing for the category. Competition breeds innovation, and innovation has bred the incredible diversity of amazing beers available in the US today. The beers that people love will thrive and continue to find shelves and taps and the ones that don’t stand out will fade away. Make a list of your favorite craft beer brands. How many are 10 years old? 5? 1? I know that I’m continuously amazed by the new offerings from America’s 3,000+ breweries, and if it means I have to spend a few extra minutes in the beer aisle sorting out my next selection, it’s worth the wait.[ref]Watson argues against the “choice overload” hypothesis, citing a meta-review that found little evidence to support it.[/ref]
There are a few conclusions I draw from this overview of the beer industry:
1. Regulations often hamper innovation and growth (a major loss for everyone, especially consumers).
2. Perspective is important: information on historical trends is better than snapshot data.
3. There is a difference between pro-business and pro-market.
I have decided to use Nathaniel’s Top 10 post as a reason to do my own. This was a fairly difficult list to make, but it was likely easier than a list of “favorite” or “best” books. What makes this list different from those is that I don’t have to think the books are any good. They could in principle be awful. What matters is the impact they had on me. However, my life has been influenced by many articles and essays, which technically don’t count. For example, Nobel economist F.A. Hayek’s 1945 article “The Use of Knowledge in Society” was far more influential than, say, his famous book The Road to Serfdom. Hamlet continues to enthrall me and was the main reason I came to love Shakespeare. It ignites my emotions and a need to reflect in a way few works do. I didn’t include it mainly because it is a play, but also because my initial reading of it was intertwined with a viewing of Kenneth Branagh’s film version (which I love). TheFARMS Review (now the Mormon Studies Review) was a highly influential journal for me and my main introduction to biblical and Mormon scholarship. My familiarity with academic journals was largely because of it. But obviously, journals don’t count. David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech/essay “This Is Water” has influenced the way I view the mundane in everyday life. This in turn inspired numerous blogposts, a conference paper, and a new direction of research for me. But it is an essay, not a book. Of course, there are my many kind and intelligent friends that have helped shape my views through discussions, recommendations, blog posts, theses and dissertations, etc. As you can see, plenty of influential pieces and people are being left out, some of which are pretty big.
Now that that has been clarified, let’s proceed with the list (in the order I read them):
1. The LDS Standard Works
Being a devout Latter-day Saint (Mormon), it shouldn’t be any surprise that our scriptural canon shows up on the list. One could say that the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price are all separate books (and they’d be right), but as you can see in the pic, the four are often published together in a “quad.” These “standard works” are essentially the Mormon canon. Understanding the historical, cultural, textual, and theological meaning of these texts take up a considerable amount of my time and thinking. These are the foundational texts for the paradigm by which I make sense of life. And it was the desire to learn everything I could about these texts and their meaning(s) that eventually spilled over into various fields.
I often say that Calvin and Hobbes was my first introduction to philosophy. And I mean that quite seriously. I used to remove the “funnies” every Sunday morning from the paper in order to read the latest strip from Watterson. I cut out strips centered around Spaceman Spiff and kept them in a folder (I was a big Star Wars fan, therefore, anything with space was cool). Calvin & Hobbes strips are scattered with nostalgia, wisdom, practicality, and imagination. I now own five C&H volumes. The 10th anniversary book was my first and features an introduction by Watterson, which discusses the transition of comics, his influences, the constraints of Sunday strip formats, an explanation of the recurring characters, etc. But the best part is his commentary on the various strips, no matter how brief. For example, the strip where Calvin breaks his dad’s binoculars features this insert from Watterson: “I think we’ve all gone through something like this story. You die a thousand deaths before you even get in trouble.” Nice to know someone else gets the small things in life.
I’m slightly cheating here. At the very beginning of my mission, my trainer (i.e. first missionary companion) owned Madsen’s 1978 audio lectures titled Joseph Smith the Prophet. I didn’t come into contact with the book version until I was well off my mission. But given the fact that the book is basically a word-for-word reprint of the lectures, I included it. I cannot stress enough the impact of these lectures. We listened to them in the car during our travels (when we had a car). I would lay awake late at night listening to them with my headphones. I included them as part of my personal morning studies. This was the first time that Joseph Smith, the founder of my religion, became real to me. While still a positive, faith-promoting rendition, it was the first time he was fleshed out as a living human being. More than that, it was the first time that I can remember any historical figure being fleshed out in my mind. Up to that point, history was an abstraction to me. But these lectures made me want to dive into the details and nuances of history (and eventually everything else). While scholarship over the last few decades has surpassed this, it was still monumental for me. In essence, this was the beginning of my intellectual journey.
I was lucky enough to meet Truman and Ann Madsen at a women’s conference in Las Vegas on my mission. We four missionaries (me, my companion, and another missionary companionship) were virtually the only males in attendance. I was saddened when Truman passed away a couple years later. It made me all the more grateful that I had been able to thank him personally for the impact his work had on me.
Left to right: Elder Velasco, Ann Madsen, Truman Madsen, Me (2007)
I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone frankly. It is mildly interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying when it comes to the religion vs. science debate.[ref]It might be worth noting that atheist philosopher Antony Flew was impressed by Schroeder’s arguments, which helped move him to embrace a form of deism late in life.[/ref] However, it was Schroeder that made me actually look at the debate. My interest in science and the history of science can be traced back to this book. Furthermore, it is the reason I became quite comfortable with biological evolution. Prior to my mission, I hadn’t given evolution a thought. I gave it superficial attention on my mission, drawing largely from outdated, anti-evolution quotes (still) found in the Church’s institute manuals.[ref]I remember being called a “hybrid Mormon” one time because I answered the evolution question with, “I don’t personally believe it, but if that’s how God did it, I’m fine with that.” This was my answer for some time.[/ref] But it was Schroeder’s book, which I picked up at a Barnes & Nobles (?) one P-Day,[ref]Mormon missionary lingo for “preparation day,” which was basically our day off. We were supposed to “prepare” for the rest of the week by doing our grocery shopping and the like. Most of us took it to mean “Play Day” and that’s what we did.[/ref] that made me think differently. Despite being critical of the theory (he is one of the contrarian scientists in Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed), he provided a new paradigm by drawing on ancient Jewish scholars such as Rashi, Maimonides, and Nahmanides. This helped me think about my own faith’s approach to science and I found myself defending evolution against fellow missionaries by the end of it all.
In elementary school, I was part of a “gifted and talented” program called EXPO (EXceptional POtential). One of its perks was that I was allowed to attend an EXPO course during regular class time. Most the time, EXPO was much more fun than your everyday class. However, when I arrived in middle school, I found that EXPO was during my English class. English had been my favorite subject for years, which is why I quit going to EXPO after one class because I didn’t want to miss it. This love of English stayed with me up to my World Literature course in my early years of college. I had recently returned from my mission, during which I had been trying to understand the history, language, and culture of the scriptures as well as Christian history generally. This anthology was required for the course and it immersed me in multiple voices from a variety of times and cultures. It included works by Yeats, Proust, Lu Xun, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, and more. It reminded me that there is so much to learn and that my studies should not only be cross-cultural, but interdisciplinary. In short, reading this anthology was my first big taste of one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism: “…receive truth, let it come from whence it may.”[ref]Unfortunately, my fiction reading basically died that same year. I was largely non-fiction until recently.[/ref]
I had never read any C.S. Lewis prior to my mission. A ward member bought Elder Anderson and I copies of The Chronicles of Narnia for Christmas one year, but I never read any of Lewis’ philosophical/apologetic writings until my first year of marriage. I still remember quite clearly lying in bed in our first apartment reading the first chapter (letter) of The Screwtape Letters and being struck by the following (from the demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood): “Your business is to fix his attention on the stream [of immediate sense experiences]. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’.” I also remember asking myself afterwards what exactly I meant by ‘real’.[ref]This portion comes from a post at The Slow Hunch.[/ref] It could be said that Lewis’ book was my first introduction to the importance of metaphysics. This led to later works on metaphysics, from Blake Ostler to David Paulsen to Edward Feser to David B. Hart to Stephen Webb. My current outlook is similar to Rosalynde Welch’s “disenchanted Mormonism,” but I imagine it will continue to change as metaphysics play an increasingly important role in my theological framework and overall worldview.
I became a Sowell admirer by reading his weekly columns when I was first becoming interested in politics, but it was this book that made me fall in love economics. I ended up reading his other works soon after, including Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Intellectuals and Society, A Conflict of Visions, Economic Facts and Fallacies, etc. All of these had their own influence, but it was Applied Economics that started it all. What made this different from, say, his Basic Economics was that it looked at economic effects in the real world and explored the unintended consequences of particular choices and policies. It showed what he calls the “constrained” or “tragic vision”[ref]This is explored in his A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.[/ref] (i.e. there are no solutions, only trade-offs) in action. It aided in my understanding of economics as not merely models and math, but behaviors, emotions, relationships, and everyday choices.
I was originally an accounting major as an undergrad. However, I both hated accounting and sucked at it. Realizing I was too far into my business degree to consider a complete change, I ended up choosing Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management (mainly because it sounded better than Business – General Studies). I didn’t have much interest in management or business outside of the practicality of a business degree until I had to do a group project on organizational culture in my HR course. In my research, I came across Dan Pink’s TED talk on human motivation. The focus on autonomy, mastery, and purpose in the workplace made me look at businesses in a different light; as organizations or communities of people rather than abstract entities. Organizational theory and management literature became a way of assessing the human condition. Business can be a practice pregnant with meaning, joy, and moral significance. The reason it often isn’t is because, as Pink puts it, there is “a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.” A desire to understand and possibly help repair this chasm was a major factor in my decision to pursue an MBA.
In his many lectures and interviews,[ref]These influenced me far more than, say, Capitalism and Freedom, mainly because I’d watched many of them before I ever read any of his books.[/ref] famed economist Milton Friedman often encouraged his audience to have a sense of proportion. It is easy to look at anecdotal evidence or snapshot data and draw conclusions about the world. Ridley’s book provides the evidence for Friedman’s “sense of proportion.” He documents how prosperity emerged and evolved over hundreds of thousands of years via specialization and exchange. This helped me look at major problems like poverty from both a global and historical perspective. More important, it helped me take typically leftist crusades like “social justice” seriously and thus led to my embrace of a kind of bleeding-heart libertarianism. By tracing the rise of living standards over the centuries, I came to see how important trade and innovation are to the improvement of human well-being. It also left me just a tad more optimistic about the future.
On a panel at Beyond Belief 2006, astrophysicist and popular science educator Neil Degrasse Tyson made an insightful comment while (kindly) rebuking the (in)famous Richard Dawkins for his rhetorical methods: “Being an educator is not only getting the truth right, but there has to be an act of persuasion in there as well. Persuasion isn’t always “here’s the facts, you’re either an idiot or you’re not.” It’s “here are the facts and here is a sensitivity to your state of mind.” And the facts plus sensitivity, when convolved together, creates impact.” Rhetoric today has a rather negative connotation, one associated with cheap emotionalism or a lack of substance. However, McCloskey’s book argues that it was rhetoric–the act of persuasion or, more to the point, the power of words–that caused and sustained the Industrial Revolution. The bourgeoisie (i.e. the professional and educated class) were praised and seen as dignified and free. This shift in opinion changed the social and political spectrums. Far more than an excellent work in economic history, this book demonstrated to me how words and ideas, along with the way they are articulated, ultimately have the ability to transform societies. Rhetoric can inspire brand new thoughts or even recast old ones in a new light. This in turn has inspired me to be careful and selective in my choice of words and phrasing when expressing my ideas.
Here are a few honorable mentions with very brief explanations as to why:
Ingri D’Aulaire, Edgar Parin D’Aulaire, D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths (1962): I read this book over and over in elementary school. Where my love of Greek and Roman mythology came from.
Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1953): I’m a huge Bond fan and this is still my favorite Bond novel.
Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker (2001): Hayek is my philosopher economist, Drucker is my philosopher manager.
Jim Butcher, Storm Front (2000): I’m going out on a limb with this one, but this may have major future repercussions. It it is the first in The Dresden Files (I need to begin #13: GhostStories) and it was recommended and given to me as a birthday gift by Nathaniel.I hadn’t read a fiction book in years prior to it. I think it very well may be beginning of my love affair with fiction. We’ll see once I finish the entire series.
I kind of wish my list was a little different, but it is what it is. This will surely change in the future. I probably missed some too. But this is what I can come up with as of now. Hope you enjoy.
The above graph comes from yet another post at the Brookings Institution, which finds that marriage leads to better outcomes for children. However, this study breaks it down into two main reasons:
More money: the income effect
More engaged parenting: the parenting effect
However, the authors come to an interesting conclusion:
If the benefits of marriage for children can be explained by other observable characteristics of the family, and especially money or parenting behavior, then policy may be more successful if focused on those pathways. It would be convenient to find the magic bullet – the one family input that really matters – but of course the truth is messier. Children’s life chances will be influenced by a complicated, shifting mesh of family characteristics (and many other factors outside the family).
Marriage is a powerful means by which incomes can be raised and parenting can be improved. But marriage itself seems immune to the ministrations of policymakers. In which case, policies to increase the incomes of unmarried parents, especially single parents, and to help parents to improve their parenting skills, should be where policy energy is now expended.
Yet, W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project points out that
marriage itself fosters higher income and better parenting among today’s parents. For instance, men who get and stay married work longer hours and make more money than their unmarried peers. And fathers and mothers who are in an intact marriage tend to engage in more involved, affectionate, and consistent parenting than their peers in single- or step-families.
The bigger point is this: you cannot easily strip marriage of its constituent parts, such as more money and a supportive parenting environment, give those parts to parents apart from marriage, and expect that children will do as well, apart from marriage.
I said a while back that I would link to my posts at The Slow Hunch given its slightly new direction. But for whatever reason, I’ve totally forgotten to link to the past several posts.
So, instead of blowing up DR with multiple posts simply linking to another blog, I’ll provide the links below with a brief description of the post. That way, all 3 readers of my blog can catch up if they’ve fallen behind:
“The Church of Starbucks” — Churches tend to teach things pertaining to character and self-control. Similarly, Starbucks’ business model focuses on developing its employees’ willpower by providing proper training and autonomy. Drawn largely from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and featuring a brief video presentation by the same author.
“Freedom to Flourish” — The Institute of Faith, Work, and Economics is think tank that researches the intersection of the three subjects in its name. For July 4, I posted their excellent and, for me, moving video titled “Freedom to Flourish.” As the video’s narrator begins, “Our lives are not divided into two halves with one part being sacred and another part secular. Worship is not reserved only for Sunday morning, but for Monday morning as well.”
“Do What You Love” — Using an article in the leftist magazine Jacobin as a springboard, I talk about how the work mantra “do what you love” robs individuals of the potential to make their labors meaningful and to experience “worship through corporeality”: the sacred in the mundane. Plus, I contrast Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech with that of David Foster Wallace.
“Don Bradley & the Sanctification of Progress” — Mormon historian Don Bradley presented a paper at the 2014 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association titled “Mormonism: The Sanctification of Human Progress.” The full video is provided in the post along with some of my favorite quotations from it. It has a lot of overlap with my own paper (written and presented by fellow DR blogger Allen Hansen) on worship through corporeality.
“Alain de Botton on Work” — Author Alain de Botton has a book written about everyday work (one I haven’t read yet). The brief post features a clip of de Botton discussing work and its connection to the human quest for meaning.
“Meeting Core Needs” — A NYT piece discussed the benefits of meeting employees’ four core needs: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Ways of meeting them included consistent physical renewal, the feeling of being valued, the chance to focus on one task at a time, and a sense of purpose. Research like this helps remind us that corporations are in fact people and should therefore be managed as such.
“Management Lessons from Dr. Who: Robert Sutton Edition” — Season 8 of the Doctor Who reboot began this August, starring Peter Capaldi as the new face of the Doctor. In this post, I weave together management insights from Stanford’s Robert Sutton with the outlook of Capaldi’s Doctor in the season premiere “Deep Breath.” Managers/leaders can’t just take a top-down, big picture stance. They must embrace a bottom-up, detail-oriented approach as well.
The Brookings Institution has a brand new study on those living on $2 a day in the U.S. One of the most interesting findings is how the estimates depend on the data source. These estimates range from 4% (12 million) to zero:
In response to questions about their study, the authors explain the range of estimates:
First, a significant portion of $2 poverty appears to be temporary, as evidenced by the lower poverty rates recorded when we extend the duration over which individuals’ welfare is assessed. Such spells may be accounted for by life events such as moving between jobs that are not necessarily indications of diminished welfare. Second, social protection programs play a critical role in the welfare of many of America’s poorest households. Programs such as food stamps (SNAP) and the Earned Income Tax Credit mean the difference between living above the $2 threshold or below it for millions of people according to some estimates. Third, a significant share of consumption for the $2 poor likely occurs out of resources that don’t count as income: savings and assets, borrowing, and in-kind government assistance. Poverty estimates based on income (money earned) and consumption (money spent) differ widely. This discrepancy is in keeping with the higher variability of income from month to month.
Furthermore, the authors explain, “If we used the exact same criteria to measure poverty in the U.S. as is used by the World Bank to obtain official poverty estimates for the developing world, we would conclude that no-one in the U.S. falls under the $2 threshold. Part of the reason for this is that even the poorest people surveyed in America appear to find a way to meet their most basic material needs (valued above $2 a day) even if their reported income is zero or close to zero. Furthermore, the poor in America have access to public goods—public education, criminal justice and infrastructure—that would be the envy of the poor in the developing world.”
Finally, the authors point out that “the methodology by which the World Bank compiles official global poverty estimates has recently changed. Whereas in the past the estimate was in practice just a measure of poverty in the developing world, the new method incorporates the populations of rich countries. For now, the entire population of these countries is assumed to not be poor.”
Understanding data sources is important. Consumption is likely a more accurate way to assess the poor’s material well-being, as I think is demonstrated in the range of estimates above. On top of this, one must take into consideration the intangible assets of one’s country. These assets, according to the World Bank, refer to the nation’s human and social capital (i.e. worker skills and trust) and the quality of its formal and informal institutions (e.g. efficient judicial system, property rights). These make up most of a nation’s total wealth.[ref]The magazine Reason has a nice write-up on intangible assets.[/ref] In 2005 (the latest data from the World Bank), the U.S. had $734,195 total wealth per capita, with $627,246 (over 85%) of that wealth being intangible.
One of those studies that should both remind those in developed countries how lucky they are and how much work there is still left to do.
The above comes from a post by economist Mark Perry in which he explains that the chart shows “the percent changes in total civil employment between December 2007 (when the recession started) and July 2014 for: a) Texas (blue line) and b) the US minus Texas. The chart tells a powerful and important story about the strength of the Texas economy, which has experienced an employment increase of more than 1.3 million workers since late 2007. In contrast, civilian employment in the other 49 states is still almost 1.3 million jobs below the December 2007 level!”
He provides another chart below: “The difference between the two charts is that the one below uses monthly nonfarm payroll employment data and I’m using total civilian employment based on the “household survey” that determines the jobless rate. Total civilian employment is a more comprehensive measure of all US workers that includes agricultural workers, the self-employed, and workers in private households. Using the more comprehensive household survey of jobs shows an even wider divide between the number of jobs added to the Texas economy (+1.3 million) and the net loss of jobs in the other 49 states since December 2007 of -1.23 million!”
From all of us down here in Texas: you’re welcome America.
Texas Tech economist Benjamin Powell has done extensive research on sweatshops, including a recent book on the subject published by Cambridge University. He has a new article in the Summer 2014 issue of The Independent Review titled “Meet the Old Sweatshops: Same as the New Sweatshops.” The article traces the history of sweatshops in 19th-century Great Britain and U.S. as well as post-WWII East Asia. It documents the incredible increase in living standards, to which sweatshop wages contributed. Perhaps more important, it looks at the impact labor laws had on sweatshop conditions and their eventual elimination:
The short answer is that the laws played very little role in ending sweatshop conditions. For the most part, the laws were adopted once the United States had already reached a level of development that had mostly eliminated the conditions the laws made illegal. Great Britain’s first restrictions on child labor applied only to children under nine years old, and Massachusetts’ child labor law, the first in the United States, limited the workday to ten hours only for children under twelve. The United States didn’t pass meaningful national legislation against child labor until 1938, when its per capita annual income was more than $10,200 (in 2010 dollars)…Similarly, the first federal U.S. minimum wage wasn’t introduced until 1938, and it set the minimum at 25 cents per hour when average productivity was already 62.7 cents (Cowen and Tabarrok 2009, chap. 7). The first state minimum-wage law wasn’t passed until 1912 in Massachusetts, and it applied only to women and children. Other national labor legislation didn’t come until the United States was even more developed…The same pattern is true of workplace safety regulation. Fishback finds that “[m]ost [safety] regulations appear to have codified existing practices in the relevant industry” (2007, 310–11) (pg. 17).
Despite the loud protests, research demonstrates that Third World sweatshops provide an above average standard of living for their workers compared to others within their economies. Also, as economist Alex Tabarrok has noted, “the soft-hearted demand for international labor standards often masks labor union protectionism.” This isn’t to say that we should be content with all examples of sweatshop conditions. But, as Powell concludes, “Poorer countries today would be better served if antisweatshop scholars and activists had a better understanding of how the historical process played out in wealthy countries” (pg. 120).
This is the title of a brand new study out from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found that having a child before marriage, beginning a relationship by “hooking up,” having multiple sexual partners before marriage, and serial cohabitation can lead to lower marital quality in the future. The data indicate that making intentional decisions rather than simply sliding through relationship transitions increases marital quality. What was especially interesting to me was that formal weddings can actually increase marital quality. Furthermore, the number of wedding attendees can also impact marital quality.
