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Women are finding it harder to find suitable partners to marry and a lot of it is to do with men being broke.

That’s not us hypothesising from anecdotal experience, the finding is from a study looking into mismatches in the marriage market.

According to a paper published in the Journal of Family and Marriage, marriage rates are going down in America because of a lack of ‘economically attractive’ male spouses.

Now that’s not to suppose that all women are just looking for men who make big bucks, it’s more about finding a partner with some stability.




‘Most American women hope to marry, but current shortages of marriageable men — men with a stable job and a good income — make this increasingly difficult,’ says Daniel Lichter, lead author in a press release.

Not only are women at a disadvantage when it comes to finding well-off partners, but some groups also fare worse than others.

Racial and ethnic minorities, especially Black women, face serious shortages of potential marital partners.

Unmarried women of low socioeconomic status and high socioeconomic status, both at the national and sub-national levels, also face a man drought.

Perhaps that’s why more women are marrying ‘below’ their own wealth and status.

Researchers used profiles of real husbands logged in American Community Survey data to create fake profiles of potential husbands.

When they released these profiles to single women, the fake profiles (based on already married men) fared better.

The made-up husbands, based on data logged from 2008 to 2012 and 2013 to 2017, made 58% more money than the current lineup of eligible bachelors.

They also were 30% more likely to be employed and 19% more likely to have a college degree (you can see why they were snapped up).

The study concludes: ‘This study reveals large deficits in the supply of potential male spouses.

‘Many young men today have little to bring to the marriage bargain, especially as young women’s educational levels on average now exceed their male suitors.’

And yeah in an ideal utopia, money shouldn’t matter, but love is also a ‘fundamentally economic transaction,’ adds Daniel.

So the options are either to remain unmarried or take someone who doesn’t meet all your standards as your husband.

Tough choice.

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