Multiple studies show that college-educated Americans are increasingly reluctant to marry those lacking a college degree. This bias is having a devastating impact on the dating market for college-educated women. Why? According to 2012 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 5.5 million college-educated women in the U.S. between the ages of 22 and 29 versus 4.1 million such men. That’s four women for every three men. Among college grads age 30 to 39, there are 7.4 million women versus 6.0 million men—five women for every four men.
In the Mad Men era, when there were men than women who had graduated college, some men married “down.” Now, when there are more women than men graduating college, we have assortative mating. The result is that women have a harder time finding a “suitable” husband.
And there is this:
One fact that becomes apparent when studying the demographics of religion is that it is almost always the women who are more devout. Across all faiths, women are less likely than men to leave organized religion. According to the Pew Research Center, 67 percent of self-described atheists are men. Statistically speaking, an atheist meeting may be one of the best places for single women to meet available men.
Adam Carolla and Chris Rock already told us this.
I suspect that the gender ratio of college-educated people within an age band is the wrong measurement. Men and women have different preferences for the age of their partners. E.g., women aged 20-29 might be matching to men aged 20-45. As the relative supply of college-educated men declines, I’d expect the upper bound on the men’s ages to increase.
Just looking at the college degree likely understates the problem (of educated women finding suitable males). What seems to be required of males is also a form of success in the job market. With the new winner-take-all economy the society may have to revert to the tribal alpha male — multiple wives family model. Or some form of matriarchy with men investing more in grooming themselves (which they do via sports I suppose).
I’d doubt this will lead to a multiple wives model.
Yes, because of the medieval cultural inelegance of it, and the unappealing status for the educated women.
But the evolutionary ‘invisible hand’ is pretty strong and will find a way. A more likely scenario is that high status educated women pick the (few) high status educated successful men to father their child, then after a few years the said men move on and father other children with other educated women, and so on. Multiple wives, not at the same time.
Trump shows this happening a bit right now — Eddie Murphy seems proud of the different mothers for his kids.
In Slovakia, “Sme Rodina” (We are Family) is a political party that go into Parliament, with a leader who’s the father of many children from different wives & lovers.
The Christian Democrats, which I support, failed to get the 5% needed to get in (first time in the 26 years of democracy).
With respect, Dr. Kling, I think your claims about the increase in assortative mating are misconceived. In the 1950’s, when many fewer women attended college, men with college degrees were not marrying down just because their wives did not have a degree. The women could, and I think would, be from the same social class and likely the same small community, and probably roughly the same intelligence, all more so than today.
For example, if I understand your background correctly, your father had a Ph.D. Your mother likely did not have one, and yet I bet neither of your parents felt that your father had “married down.”
People who don’t get a college degree today are more akin to those in your parents’ era who had dropped out of high school. From my experience, assortative mating has declined in recent decades, not increased.
This is absolutely true. The big change is that in the US at least, the education system has a much more prominent role in assortative mating and social caste. Fifty years ago, university credentials played a much smaller role in assigning social caste.
The inverse of this hypothesis should be true then, and women should be willing to “marry down” and take on husbands that are from the same socioeconomic group, but who have eschewed a degree. Male/Female birth ratios are still pretty stable near 50/50.
Yep. If you use a college degree as the measure, you get a pre-WWII period with apparently high levels of assortive mating (because very few people of either sex had a degree), a lower period in the post-war years (when men started getting degrees in large numbers), and then a higher period again once higher education became common generally. And all this may have occurred without any underlying change in the tendency to marry within your own social class.
@Slocum
The big change is the increase in people staying single. In the first two periods that didn’t happen at high rates, and this is the phenomena needing to be explained.
An atheist meeting? Don’t waste your time with that. If you want a husband with a steady job and a college education who doesn’t lose his mind when he sees a Christmas light display, join the Libertarian Party.
Ha, too true.
Atheism is defined by what you _don’t_ believe in and usually people don’t form groups around a non-belief. I searched meetup.com for an atheist group, and there’s not much there.
“In the Mad Men era, when there were men than women who had graduated college, some men married “down.” Now, when there are more women than men graduating college, we have assortative mating. The result is that women have a harder time finding a “suitable” husband”
The opposite conclusion is the likely one. In the Mad Men era it was the women that were marrying down. Life prospects with a mediocre husband with solid earning power were better than life prospects being single. Now that women earn more they can be more selective.
The most obvious revelation here is that women find most men to be crappy mates with one exception,(probably true empirically) and that if it weren’t for earning power most would be totally undesirable.
Like most other comments, please stop assuming the Mad Men era reflected that men were marrying down in the social class. Women did not have the same access to either the college or labor markets so the marriage choices were completely different back then. Also, we should focus more on first marriages and realize the marriages choices in the 1950 – 1970 reflected a lot more Shotgun Weddings instead of the modern age with birth control. Look at the teen pregnancy rates in the 1950s which were four times as high as they are today and realize 90% of the teenage moms were married. (Does not reflect if they were at conception.)
Realize the marriage choices changed dramatically (and remember it took a couple generations here) because women had equal access to the labor (and education) markets.
But then why is it assumed that women would be marrying down if they have a sociology degree and their husband owns a landscaping business?
I think the commenters are missing the point.
It happens all the time and in California there was a lot of construction workers married to teacher college graduate women. Probably the bigger problem I see on assortative mating hypothesis is education is a wrong measurement especially to the 1950 – 1970 compared to today.
There was a lot less ‘marrying’ down in the 1950s because it was not expected women went to college for most classes. Additionally, what is also missed is how many potential doctors or lawyer women chose to become nurses, teachers or housewives because that is norm of society.
Ahem… We already have a very clear solution to this problem.
It’s called same-sex marriage.
It also depends on what we mean by marrying down. If Don Draper’s wives would be “marrying down”, then I guess…you know, if she’s prepared to take out the garbage and whatnot.
Statistically speaking, an atheist meeting may be one of the best places for single women to meet available men.
As they say, “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
“Statistically speaking, an atheist meeting may be one of the best places for single women to meet available men.” << I don't believe there are good statistics on "atheist meetings".
Almost certainly better would be for women to go to sports bars, and get involved in learning to enjoy watching and talking about some sport.
By the way, weight gyms in Slovakia do seem have seen an increase in women lifting, like with Cross-Fit.
Wine tasting or restaurant testing might be good too, but the most single straight men are most likely watching sports.
A related article talked about 2 different growing Jewish communities, one where the custom is for men and women the same age to pair off and marry, one where the men are usually 2 or 3 years older. The same age pairing is not seeing an excess women problem, but the older men/younger women group is seeing a problem.
Finally, the vast majority of college educated women looking for "equality" in housework are going to be disappointed — they should be planning on hiring a housekeeper for a couple of days per week to do big cleaning so neither partner has to. And pay for this, perhaps by having the man plan on cooking a nice dinner a few days a week. While few men will be happy doing housework, many can learn to be happy cooking stuff they like and which they find their women like.