Who is more likely to be unfaithful: high- or low-income men?

The liberal instinctively idealizes and sympathizes with the man at the bottom of society (although liberals are becoming so crazy these days, it's getting hard to characterize them coherently.)  By contrast, a certain brand of conservative might be tempted to idealize the successful man: Effort or perhaps good genes get a guy to the top.

Reality seems a little more complicated than that.  Brains and discipline help a person rise, but so can Machiavellianism.  I suspect that successful people tend to be a mixed bag.

Let's test the idea that there is moral virtue in successful people by looking at marital infidelity.  I divided personal income into 5 levels and created graphs for white and black men (sample sizes = 7,959 and 894):

Black Men

White Men

Among black males, you see a spike in cheating among the highest income group.  It's a smaller increase among high-earning white males.

So successful men are a little more likely to be unfaithful. You might attribute this to the greater attractiveness that comes with money or to greater social opportunities, but whatever the case, there is no indication here that successful men are more moral than others.  It's important that we stick to reality and not ideology.