Did Online Dating Increase US Income Inequality? (bnnbloomberg.ca)
- Reference: 0174996815
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/14/2054251/did-online-dating-increase-us-income-inequality
- Source link: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2024/09/14/online-dating-caused-a-rise-in-us-income-inequality-research-paper-shows/
> Using data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey from 2008 to 2021, when online dating quickly became prevalent, the economists found that women became slightly more selective when choosing partners based on age, while men became slightly more selective based on education. But when the researchers compared that with data on married couples from 1960 and 1980, they found that people in the recent period increasingly went for partners with the same wage and education levels...
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> Overall, the predominance of online apps to find a future partner has led to a 3-percentage-point increase in the Gini coefficient — a widely used measure of income inequality, the research shows.
The reseachers were from the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and St. Louis, and from Haverford College, according to the article — which also includes this quote from their paper.
"We find that the increase in income inequality over the past half a century is explained to a large extent by sorting on vertical characteristics, such as income and skill, and their interaction with education."
[1] https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2024/09/14/online-dating-caused-a-rise-in-us-income-inequality-research-paper-shows/
Two things (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Post covid, the 18-30 crowd is increasingly rejecting online dating as being too hollow/inauthentic/whatever, so it's on a steep decline, I'm not sure how relevant this is for discussion
2) People getting married 1960-1980 (and really, any time before 1980) most people were under strict instructions to get married ASAP, to anyone, although preferably someone in the same church/town. Post birth control, the chances of having a child out of wedlock dropped by ~50%, so not getting married ASAP wasn't such a risk anymore
3) If you're waiting until you're 30+ years old, you can afford to wait a few more years to find someone you can actually tolerate, and yeah they'll probably be in a similar socio-economic group to you, since the incentive to marry, anyone, ASAP no longer exists.
6-6-6 relationship (Score:2)
Women are looking for a 6-6-6 relationship
6 figure income
6 feet tall or more
6 pack Abs
Re: (Score:2)
The divorce revolution is still in full swing. That means that marrying someone who makes significantly less than you do is a very high financial liability. The less your partner makes, the more your partner takes when they divorce you (regardless of gender).
Plenty of people have wised up to this fact, and so are seeking partners who not only make a similar income but are likely to continue doing so into the future.
I don't know about that (Score:1)
What i do know is that online dating cannot be making women happy. They get to be minutely prescriptive about the guy they want and then get fucked and dumped at the same rate as before. Whereas for me it was a smorgasbord of women. If I was 20 again I would have loved it, I ran my number up 25 or so (serially) in the space of a year, and not because I was interested in that - they were. Most of them apparently thought that if they get a guy in bed then they had their hooks in him, or somesuch. None of
Did betteridge's law increase income inequality? (Score:1)
No.
Re: (Score:2)
Sigh, wish I had moderator points. But I can't decide if +1 Funny or +1 Insightful....
More interested in the small changes (Score:2)
Did women pick slightly older men, and men slightly better educated women? Or did it go the other way....
I'm missing the causal link? (Score:2)
Know what else happened between 2008 and 2021?
--A housing market collapse.
--A pandemic.
--A 50% increase in average college costs.
--A 50% increase in average rent.
--A 25% overall inflation rate.
--The cryptocurrency boom/bust.
--Record low interest rates for a sustained period of time.
--A well above average amount of quantitative easing.
--Hundreds of thousands of mergers and acquisitions, reducing the overall number of high paying jobs.
There was a massive overall economic shift during that time period, one of
Re: (Score:2)
Another comment I'd mod up if I had points today. This has been a quite high-value set of comments so far.
Vertical characteristics (Score:2)
> "We find that the increase in income inequality over the past half a century is explained to a large extent by sorting on vertical characteristics
Is this a convoluted way to say tall people have more money?
Nah (Score:2)
1. College fetishism (everyone must go to college!) - and colleges tend to sort people into like groups
2. The newfangled sexual rules ... believe it or not, the boss marrying his secretary was pretty good for social group mixing.
Re: (Score:2)
You could say the same (#2) about typing pools. It's how my parents met, for instance.
Yes, that's the culprit (Score:2)
Not decades of neoliberalism, union busting, free trade, and lobbyists and politicians using the revolving door to screw workers over.
No, it's the online dating you see. Your fault, not ours!
Is the inverse true? (Score:2)
If two poor people marry, does that reduce wealth inequality because they're now considered one household instead of two?
At the risk of going full XKCD here, it seems like all we need to do to reduce wealth inequality is get all the poor people to marry each other.
Re: (Score:2)
Wealth is created through habits. The poor have a lot of drug/alcohol issues, more than the wealthy. Poor people who have stable relationships long term tend to become more affluent. Marrying all the poor people to other poor people would socially advance them *if* they avoided other habitual pitfalls that tend to depress household income.
Example: my ex-wife made about half what I did at the apex of her career. She's now semi-permanently unemployed due to drug addiction. Fired from her last 3 jobs due
Weak link (Score:2)
Disclaimer, only read the Slashdot summary, not the original source. Firstly 3% change sounds like statistical noise to my untrained eyes. Secondly where is the linkage? Over that 40 year period there have been so many other changes that could affect household income inequality how do you really tie it to online dating?
When it comes to this cause and effect claim I am reminded of the ‘Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’ (Pastafarianism) claim that global warming is correlated with a de
Pseudoscience nonsense (Score:2)
Despite Cinderella stories, people have always tended to marry within their own peer group. The only exceptions are usually people who for some reason are exceptionally attractive or notorious. In order to marry someone, you have to first meet them. While the occasional rich person might marry a servant, such events have always been rare.
Obligatory (Score:2)
> Online Dating Increased US Income Inequality?
Women and children hit worst .
> increase in income inequality over the past half a century
Half a century?! There was no Internet in 1974, much less "dating apps", what are we talking about?
> explained to a large extent by sorting on vertical characteristics such as income and skill, and their interaction with education
What does this word-salad even mean?
Simple solution (Score:2)
Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves... oh wait.