Posted on 09/12/2019 8:18:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
America is facing a significant shortage of highly educated “economically attractive” unmarried men who earn at least $53,000 and have a college degree. And the situation could result in unmarried women remaining unmarried or marrying less well-suited partners, a study says.
That’s the conclusion reached by researchers Daniel T. Lichter of Cornell University, Joseph P. Price of Brigham Young University, and Jeffrey M. Swigert of Southern Utah University in their study, Mismatches in the Marriage Market, published this month in the Journal of Family and Marriage.
The results of the study were based on comparisons between real data on unmarried men and a synthetic profile of the ideal husband that the average unmarried woman desired, created from marriage data from 2008 to 2012 and 2013 to 2017 recorded in the American Community Survey.
“These synthetic husbands have an average income that is about 58% higher than actual unmarried men who are currently available to unmarried women. They also are 30% more likely to be employed (90% vs. 70%) and 19% more likely to have a college degree (30% vs. 25%),” the study says.
“Our analyses provide clear evidence of an excess supply of men with low income and education and, conversely, shortages of economically attractive unmarried men (with at least a bachelor’s degree and higher levels of income) for women to marry. One implication is that promoting good jobs may ultimately be the best marriage promotion policy rather than marriage education courses that teach new relationship skills,” the researchers conclude.
In an interview with The Christian Post on Tuesday, Price explained that the disparity between the characteristics unmarried women are looking for in a life partner and their available choices in reality have created “a structural mismatch” starkly highlighted in their research.
“The important contribution that our paper made was just to document the structural mismatch and the kind of men on average that women are looking for and the kind of men that are currently available for them," Price said. "So our best guess among the unmarried women in our sample, they are hoping to marry someone whose average income is $53,000, but if you look at the average income among the potential partners they can choose from, it's about $35,000. So this $18,000 gap creates a bit of a structural mismatch.”
Challenge of minority women
While all unmarried women face the challenge of finding suitable marriage partners, the study highlights that this challenge is particularly acute for minority women and black women especially. Unmarried Women from both low socioeconomic backgrounds as well as those with high socioeconomic status also have an especially hard time finding suitable partners.
“High rates of incarceration and substantial out-marriage to white women, especially among black men, have also left many minority women without marital partners. The fact that women’s educational levels now exceed men’s further implies that young women—by necessity—are less financially dependent on husbands than in the past and that educational hypogamy has become more commonplace,” the study says.
Among Christian women and those of other faiths where women are expected to marry in order to pursue intimate relationships, Price said there might have to be a cultural shift from hypergamy — where women tend to marry up — to one of hypogamy — where they marry below their standards.
“Hypergamy is this pattern we observe in data in which women tend to marry men with a higher level of education. And given that women now constitute about 60 percent of the college degrees, what you’ll probably start to see in faith communities is an erosion of the hypergamy norm, in which case women are OK marrying a husband who has less education than her. That’s one solution to the problem within a faith community,” Price said.
When asked about men who have invested in trade schools to acquire skills such as plumbing or carpentry, Price noted that that alternative route is also a solution for unmarried men to increase their stock, but the current data show unmarried women have a stronger preference for men with college degrees.
“I think that’s another solution too. It’s kind of a renewal of the dignity of work, which is that someone who has a skill, has a trade, and is able to work hard will be able to support a family even if they do not have a college degree,” he said.
A long-term response to improve the marriage prospects of the current crop of economically and educationally undesirable single men is to change the culture.
“We might have to change that norm, where the potential spouses actually can make a living through these other routes. Those are the alternative pathways to having a good life and a steady income,” he says.
Changing the culture
While alternative solutions to help single men lift their income so that they are more in line with the current desired spouses of unmarried women, changing the culture from hypergamy to one of hypogamy will be a lot more difficult.
“I don’t know how you change the norm — that you can have a happy marriage and a successful marriage with someone who is earning much less than you’re hoping to find. I don’t have a solution to that,” he says.
When asked what advice he would give to Christians facing this situation, Price said marriage can sometimes help men improve their status in life.
“I guess on a personal level I would say that marriage changes people in positive ways and it’s quite possible that, over time in a strong marriage, both the husband and wife will grow in their skills and talents,” he said.
There are men, he explained, “who through marriage have been able to improve their prospects at work, seek more education or seek additional training, try to get those promotions. Try to earn more.
“What we’re seeing is that the unmarried men, as they are right now, we can’t know for sure what their potential is going to be if they were in a lasting and committed marriage,” Price noted.
Not many women appear willing to budge on their standard, however, so Price suggested that churches can play a more integral role in helping men improve their prospects as potential partners for the crop of ambitious women.
“I think we have to take more seriously the charge as a faith community to encourage our young men to get the education, get the training they need to be successful in a career so they can be in a position to support a family and be attractive as a potential partner in a marriage,” he said.
Selectivity
In The Coming Divorce Decline, published last September, University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen shows that better educated women 44 years old and younger tended to have more lasting marriages than their older counterparts because they were more selective in their choice of partners. He also noted that this selectivity has resulted in marriage becoming rarer and reflective of social inequality.
“Marriage is become more selective, and more stable, even as attitudes toward divorce are becoming more permissive, and cohabitation has grown less stable. The U.S. is progressing toward a system in which marriage is rarer, and more stable, than it was in the past, representing an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality,” Cohen notes in his analysis.
“Over the last decade, newly married women have become more likely to be in their first marriages, more likely to have bachelor's degrees or higher education, less likely to be under age 25, and less likely to have grown children in the household — all of which suggests falling risk of divorce,” he continues.
In discussing the trend with Bloomberg, Cohen explained that marriage today is becoming more of an “achievement of status” for those who choose it.
“Marriage is more and more an achievement of status, rather than something that people do regardless of how they’re doing,” Cohen said.
“The change among young people is particularly striking,” Susan Brown, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University, told Bloomberg in response to Cohen’s analysis. “The characteristics of young married couples today signal a sustained decline [in divorce rates] in the coming years.”
Many poorer and less educated Americans are often in cohabiting relationships with children. Those relationships are seen as less stable.
A study conducted in 2016 by Barna shows that a majority of Americans now believe in cohabitation due to pressures like shifting gender roles and expectations, the delay of marriage, and a secularizing culture.
Women are attracted to men that they think they can change.
Men are attracted to women that they don’t want to change.
Over time, just the opposite happens.
It’s just that simple.
"Oh, wait, the dreaded "you'll die alone" thing. Got news for you, half of all married people "die alone". Usually chicks when the man dies earlier. An argument can be made that everyone dies alone anyway. It ain't a team sport. And it appears you have never spoken to anyone about older guys in senior centers. It's like 20 to 1. Those old geezers are fighting off waves of old women like a machine gunner in the Pusan Perimeter!"
LOL, the imagery that appears in my brain!
Mine did, but she knew when I met her that I would never make a lot of money in my chosen profession. Didn’t bother her then, and 19 years later doesn’t bother her now.
On the other hand, the flip side is that there is an absolutely stunning number of extremely accomplished and successful yet surprisingly attractive women from forty on up who are wonderful people that are simply looking to find a life partner who is near their age and in a similar position in life professionally and financially
So if you are a successful and accomplished guy with a lot to offer and are willing to stay in your own age lane and reject the half your age plus eight thing, the whole “ Women won’t marry down” is a not a bug, it’s a feature.
My divorce lawyer insisted that if I ever re marry a prenup was mandatory and he would personally shoot me if I neglected to put one in place.
Can’t disagree with that but coming to the rather stunning realization that in some instances that I may actually be the one who is the intended target of the agreement or at least that it’s mutual. And that’s saying something
Not sure how I feel about that but can not deny that there are some truly outstanding and accomplished women who are also as much wonderful individuals as they are accomplished from a career perspective
Uh...Like my wife was...and once the kids came along I became just “staff”...20+ years now...If I had to do it all over...
BTW how does one reply to the original post? I see no link
Part of good marriage philosophy is that the kids, as important as they are, will eventually leave the nest. So its most important to keep the spousal relationship alive and well, otherwise you wind up not having anything in common after the kids are gone.
We could have an affirmative action lottery, to force economically attractive white men to marry black women.
Bring the kids into the world. Raise them right. Kick them out. Hope they remember you when we get old.
We are in the kick them out stage. Whoo Hooo.
You are looking at internet listings about base pay.
The posters with direct knowledge are mostly talking about experienced people with seniority, and who work jobs which involve lots of overtime during bad-weather events, at time and a half, double-time, adverse-weather differential, travel differential, etc, etc.
Base pay is NOT necessarily what experienced people wind up making.
Check out the City of Burlington Vt union contract. Base pay for a line worker first class is up to $82K. In Vermont.
On reason I would be hesitant to marry a younger woman is because I would not want to kick the bucket and leave her in a position where she is alone for 25+ years
Of course, the obvious solution to that dilemma is to marry a woman so much younger than you that when you kick the bucket she is still young enough to enjoy your money and live the life she chooses with whatever kind of guy she chooses
That’s a problem with its own self solution
Popular culture destroys boys and men and anything masculine... schools expect boys to be little girls...
We are literally destroying our nation from within.
Yup, horror stories abound and are seemingly the norm as opposed to a rarity
Our society is broken and the system is corrupt and is destroying the basis and foundation for a healthy relationship
The solution is to avoid the system by signing a a fair and mutually agreed to marriage dissolution contract before the wedding so if you don’t make it in the marriage, the dissolution is quick, as painless as possible and gets done without lawyers on both sides ending up with the bulk of everything you have built in your marriage
There really is no other way.
I am 52, I don’t know a sole who matches your description in my age range.
You could go the route of being a young woman's sugar daddy while she gets through college. She graduates and moves on, and you find another sugar baby in the fall.
Yes thats what I told my wife....in counseling she flat out said kids are top priority...and the counselor said nothing...I then new right then that counseling was worthless...But I know there is blame to go around...the kids, multiple cats, dog, and iphone get all the time..miserable situation
You could go the route of being a young woman’s sugar daddy while she gets through college. She graduates and moves on, and you find another sugar baby in the fall.
————-
Thought under class college girls looked way to young for me when I graduated and felt kind of creepy asking one for a date.
That’s back when I was 23 .
At my age now, it is creepy
I’ll pass
I will give the universal male response: I would have been extremely happy to stay in my age lane for Neil I hit 30. After that.....hell no.
:^)
At least the gay ones are now out so women won’t have to dig very deep into their closets.
Too many college degrees today aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Marrying a hard working good man with a trade skill is where it’s at.
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