Mark Gimein in Slate on the “eligible-bachelor paradox”:
This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no
longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are
married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate
number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short,
socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool
of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.” Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of
them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not
their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.
Tyler Cowen doesn’t quite buy it.
So the “strong bidding
women” can always cave and settle for a “lesser man” after an optimal
amount of waiting, yet many don’t. The distinction between
period-by-period happiness and overall lifetime happiness also shapes
the market. As smart single women mature, their lives get better and
better. “Settling”
becomes psychologically harder, even if it would make some of the
“settlers” happy in the longer run. So settling doesn’t happen;
decisiveness become harder to conjure up at the same time that its
long-run value is increasing, or in other words behavioral economics is
very much at work here.
Your thoughts?
April 11th, 2008 at 9:56 am
I have always thought that “the marriage market” was a bad metaphor, not to mention insulting to both genders. People don’t really make marriage choices in the same way they’d buy a car (at least I hope not). Those who do deserve to have the sad marriages that are probably the result of that kind of cynicism.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
The flip side is that desireable woman are married first and those that remain are less desireable. Therefore what is left in the pool are less desireable men and women. As time passes what happens are that people become more set in their ways, and unwilling or unable to make the changes necessary to improve their chances in the marriage market.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
The flip side is that desireable woman are married first and those that remain are less desireable. Therefore what is left in the pool are less desireable men and women. As time passes what happens are that people become more set in their ways, and unwilling or unable to make the changes necessary to improve their chances in the marriage market.
April 11th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Sounds like oversimplified and outdated thinking to me. Where’s the data on this? How do changing marriage trends affect this assertion?
My BS alarm is going off big time.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
My sister, a very decisive woman, remains unmarried because she is higher paid and better educated than any available single man she knows. She should have stayed in the “typing pool” if she had wanted to get married. “Dumb blondes” are the winners in the marriage market place.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
What is everyone missing about this? – about the best place to live and the mating market. Evolutionary history suggests that selection of “mates” and “place” has never been a conscious and rational decision, made on an individual level. Now, we have the freedom to consciously decide where to live and who to live with. They were more “group think” decisions before – think mass migration over the Bering Strait. But, we still don’t know for sure how or why we make the decisions we do. The “Big 5” psychological traits in Florida’s work are just a start at explaining this. We know we are “attracted,” but we don’t really know why – and it makes the discussion and demographics very interesting.
Have a good weekend, mates.
April 12th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I think it’s a ridiculous exchange in which two people with no special knowledge or insight into the area exchange remarks based on their prejudices and preconceptions.
April 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Yes there is a shortage of eligible men. This is why I get laid so frequently.