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.
Do you mean to tell me that all those men who majored in feminist studies or global warming are not ‘economically attractive’???
When I was 24 I ended up taking a job in a rural community where every single woman my age was already married and/or had at least one child. Spent most of my time alone there.
” A pretty lady has latched onto me. She loves my ass. Literally.
I’m 72 and she’s 45. Go figure....”
Ironclad Prenup.
I think you misunderstand. This gal and I are best friends. We're not married to each other.
Last time I checked, a friendship doesn't require a legal document.
....to stay in my age lane UNTIL (not “for Neil”) I hit 30.
I’m really starting to hate autocorrect
Nope.
As a matter of fact, that is an absolute unsolution.
The correct solution is what we disgarded to get to this point. The person who does something to end the marriage pays a penalty to the injured party they are disgarding.
That is the system which has been proven to work for centuries. It got in the way of chasing selfish hedonism, and was discarded. That mean that there is some panacea out there that will make one party discarding the person they entered into marriage not cause horrible damage.
I’m glad I figured it out. I found many college boys to be arrogant, entitled and incompetent at basic living skills.
Woohoo!
More wimmenfolk for SW!
Single
No nasty x
No narcisqsistic millennial snot noses
Great salary
Boat
Harley
Owns his home by the sea
Loves Jesus (because he loved me first)
...8.2% body fat six pack abs and 12-pack in the boat cooler.
Suck it up man-bun wearing,.underachieving facebook wimps!
...ok...I’m done for now
/s
I had LOTS of women giving me attention while I was in my 20-30’s and single.
Unfortunately, almost all of them were MARRIED, many had children, or had been married. Several were engaged. Being married or engaged did nothing to stop them from having a fling with me. These were good looking women, not bar room skanks.
I ended up marrying a divorced mother with a son. But I refused to have Children with her. She and I have been married 35+ years.
From the movie, Fierce creatures, staring John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline:
[Vince opens the door and leans halfway into Willa’s office]
Vince McCain: Willa, can I ask you a question?
Willa Weston: Sure.
Vince McCain: Those breasts real?
Willa Weston: Yes.
Vince McCain: [Closes door, but we hear him through it] Yippee.
[Reopens door and comes in]
Vince McCain: You know, Willa, uh, you better be careful dressed like that around here. People will think you’re sleeping your way to the top.
Willa Weston: Just as long as they don’t think I’m sleeping my way to the middle.
Amen to that!
Hell, I'm a doctor and I am in awe of some of these handymen.
They analyze the situation, come up with a solution, and fix the problem.
I simply don't have that knowledge or skills, so I pay them handsomely to do that for me.
If I had it to do over again, I would have never gone the MD route.
Too much time to get trained, and in the end you are up to your eyeballs in debt, and in my case, I don't make that much money for the cost in life-years lost.
If I'd become an electrician, I'd probably have a million dollars in the bank and owned my own business.
Maybe even nearing retirement.
But I can now never retire.
And what does an Economically Attractive male get in return?
I was not going to broach my pet peeve, except this is from the Christian Post, so here goes:
Professing Christian women, by and large, do not place an emphasis on a man’s spiritual commitment. It is merely icing on the cake, if it is considered at all. His earning potential and physical attractiveness are both far more important factors.
I have served in ministry, including in youth ministry. For two years in one church, I was responsible for all background arrangements for all weddings (from the church staff, not the marrying couple, angle). I saw plenty up close in both functions. I did not like what I saw.
I can count on my two hands the number of marriages I have seen firsthand in my entire life that to my mind mirrored to any significant degree the relationship between Christ and his Church.
Jesus Christ was not wealthy. The Apostles were not wealthy.
If professing Christian women want, first and last, a wealthy male, then let them stop pretending to be devout Christians. PERIOD.
Be hot or be cold!
If they effectively want to trade their sex for wealth, let them do so as honest heathen.
(By the bye: Many of those marriages that I witnessed, so readily blessed by the complicit hierarchy, ultimately ended in divorce. Maybe Mammon really is not the best master.)
Took a one year deferral on my entry after being accepted into med school to take some time out for aviation and engineering research related activities and ended up abandoning med school entirely
Everyone thought I was crazy at the time but can’t complain about how it worked out.
Probably had more positive impact on medical field apply aerospace tech and blue collar fabrication skills to bio med engineering than I ever would have had as a doc
America really needs to re develop a new respect for the hard working men ( and women) who get their hands dirty and actually make things happen In our society
Inara: "Mal! You don't have to die alone!"
Malcolm Reynolds: "Everybody dies alone."
That is almost always true...
Did you see the recent FR post where the creator of sex in the city said she regretted making the show and she is sad and lonely. Big win for feminism.
I did see that. I hope some young women see that before it’s too late for them.
The traditional greeting to a bride is “Best Wishes,” and to a groom is “Congratulations.”Why is that? Attracting a mate is an accomplishment for a man, settling on a man is a venture for the woman. Traditionally.
“Can you explain what a mercenary women is?”
Someone you must experience for yourself, it seems.
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