When I was growing up in the “Dark Ages”, I was informed that I was going to college. My parents had issued a dictate and I was bound to follow. That is no true today.
Today it seems natural that many young men who are wrapping up high school wouldn’t feel the need to attend college when the people running them don’t respect who they are or where they came from. Then there is the formidable debt requirement.
But with women graduating college at a faster pace, creates a different problem; when women go looking for a mate, they don’t want to marry down.
But it’s worse than that. As a 2019 study for the Journal of Marriage and Family found, this creates a serious problem for family formation.
The authors summarized their findings by writing: ‘Our study uncovers the demographic reality of large deficits in the supply of men who are suited or well matched for today’s unmarried women. If nothing else, our empirical results indicate that the US marriage market is currently in disequilibria. The supply of unmarried men is out of demographic balance with the demand for marriageable men among America’s currently unmarried women.’
Put simply, there are too many eligible, educated women chasing too few men with the same qualifications. An ever-widening gender gap in our colleges is only going to make that even worse.
When I was discussing this issue with a client, they pointed out that women especially college educated are also still looking to marry up. That they want to find mates who are making more than they are. If true, this creates an even smaller pool.
But one son, who is just starting to get back in school, agrees that this is not the case, based upon personal experience. So who know…