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.
I work in employee benefits.
30 years ago it was almost 100% male.
Now it’s 95% female.
These are high paying field rep jobs, planners, benefit consultants etc
Same with banking, insurance and finance.
Amen to that!! I am 62, work in banking, have no trouble getting dates, make well over $120K in a small town market, but because many women in my age range have become ridiculous with very bad attitudes, many being simply bat $h1+ crazy, I have been single by divorce for over 18 years. Not going to marry a problem or someone who makes me miserable. Not looking for Miss Senior America, either, so my standards are not set that high. Haven't completely lost hope and still have my eyes open, but I never ever expected to be single this long . . . not my nature.
“I know linemen with HS degrees only that make +200K.”
Not in my area. They do well. But not 200k. $65-85k per year tops unless a higher up boss.
Well said
How much of that is affirmative action.
In my career, I saw a lot of women being promoted because they were women.
Not that they were incompetent, but if it was even close, the job went to the woman.
Sucks to be them. I make more and just do the designs.
They risk their lives, and they work a lot of hours.
Think that might be part of the problem?
I told my boys to STAY CLEAR of women who were raised in the US (or Western Europe), as I did. There are billions more women who are not products of our cultural rot and therefore the chances of a successful marriage are much greater for them.
Since, in the end, it’s all a probability game - yes, there are still good women in the US, but at a far lower percentage than before, and at a far lower percentage than many other countries. So why roll the dice here, if it’s not necessary?
Sorry, but my guys have found the women out there are a hundred shades of nuts.
Have to go with EE Gator on this one. I have a Bro-in-law that has no choice but $200k. The hours are brutal and even when he’s off,he’s on call.
On a different note, I made the following comment in general and it still applies: The article is a full page on marriage and not one mention of God or what the Bible says on the subject...see any problem?
I did. My parents were aghast when I married a mechanic.
26 years later we own our own business including the commercial building it is in and have one payment left on our house (we are pretty excited about that). We have 4 successful adult children living responsibly and independently on their own. They all have associates degrees, two are pursuing bachelors in STEM fields, one is a tradesmen like his father and the the youngest just married an electrician.
I have been a stay at home wife since day one and live a comfortable spoiled life, although he does make me spend a morning or two a week on doing the books.
This from the article “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,” is what we need to shout from the rooftops.
It didn’t take long for my parents to realize what a talented gem my spouse is. He is a genius with cars but he is also a fair hand at plumbing and construction.
What do I do all day. Some light housework, a little scratch cooking and various hobbies.
Women won’t marry down. Men won’t marry old.
One correction.
The degree shows that you completed the graduation requirements, and does not mean you are smart OR educated.
Behold the unspoken method of men, in response to flaming feminism, simply called MGTOW.
Western society is really screwed up.
Feel really sorry for the young guys these days. An unintended consequence of relative economic independence for women is they have little interest in getting married and just want “hook ups” and tinder. As a result, it’s like high school all over with all the girls chasing the few “hot guys” while ignoring guys who they perceive to have lower status or desirability, who they reject pretty shamelessly.
This goes on - for a while.
Like until early to mid thirties when they are starting to look a bit worse for the wear after a decade or so of good times in the party time, hook up culture and fewer and fewer guys are are asking for phone number.
And all those undesirable nerds are finally entering their peak career years after years of putting in their dues.
Now that THEY are successful, the last thing they want to do is seriously date the women who have been rejecting them for their entire adult lives and who they have a serious chip on their shoulder against.
Instead, they are going for the younger girls in their teens and early twenty’s who are working hard at starting the cycle that the now increasingly desperate thirty somethings are at the end of
At the end of the day, everyone is miserable, alienated from members of the opposite sex and increasingly bitter as the prospects of a meaningful relationship and traditional family life with kids fades into oblivion
Well, other than a certain French President.
People with at least a rudimentary understanding of human sexuality predicted this when no fault divorce laws first began to be passed. They also predicted a push for homosexual marriage if no fault divorce could first be passed. Here we are now, and they were right on both counts.
Frankly though, this state of affairs is not in any way a problem. It is a solution. People who don't want the injured party to be compensated in the event of a divorce have no business whatsoever being married themselves. When we have people who implement just laws again this situation will change.
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