The missing men of the American marriage market
The missing men of the American marriage market Rubberball/Mike Kemp/Getty Images/Brand X It's a bit weird to think of dating or marriage as a market
The missing men of the American marriage market Rubberball/Mike Kemp/Getty Images/Brand X It's a bit weird to think of dating or marriage as a market — but this is a newsletter that tries to make sense of the world through economics. And, like any market, shifts in supply and demand can reshape romantic outcomes in pretty profound ways. First, a dating story that illustrates this dynamic. Then we'll get to a fascinating new study that may help explain why getting married has become harder for many American women. But first, the story. If you haven't heard of him, Jack Antonoff is a musician and super-producer. He, for example, produced a slew of blockbuster albums for Taylor Swift and co-produced nearly every song on Kendrick Lamar's most recent album GNX. I assume he gets invited to great parties. Sponsor Message But he didn't always. On a recent episode of The Howard Stern Show, Antonoff reminisced about his struggles to fit in at public school in New Jersey around the turn of the millennium. He said he was basically bullied for being an artsy punk with blue-dyed hair "who everyone thought was gay." Then Antonoff transferred to a performing arts high school in New York City, and everything turned around for him. He thrived among like-minded artsy types. And, he suggested, his dating life improved because of the school's demographic imbalance. "I went from being made fun of for being 'gay' — because I had blue hair — to being the only straight kid in the class," Antonoff told Stern. Antonoff had many things going for him. But he suggested, kind of self-deprecatingly, the math at this new school worked in his favor. His high school sweetheart became none other than Scarlett Johansson. toggle caption Evan Agostini/Getty Images/Getty Images North America "You're a genius," joked Stern. "You picked a high school where everyone was gay — so you get Scarlett Johansson." It may have been a joke, but it actually points to a broader phenomenon that can affect whole societies. Economists and other social scientists have long studied how gender imbalances can dramatically reshape dating and marriage markets, which can help the romantic prospects of some while hurting the prospects of others. Sponsor Message A lot of these studies involve bleak, depressing stuff. For example, a large body of research looks at gender imbalances after wars, when societies lose large numbers of young men. One influential study looked at what happened in France after much of the male population was killed during World War I. The authors found that the men who remained in France tended to "marry up," pairing with women from higher social classes "that would have been inaccessible before the war." In a sense, the value of French men in the marriage market seems to have increased because men were in short supply.
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