The Eligible Bachelor Paradox

http://www.slate.com/id/2188684/pagenum/all/

by jwt • 17 years ago

94 116 17 years ago

acgourley2• 17 years ago

I'm a bit bothered than there is no objective evidence - just a claim that "everybody knows" followed by a loose application of game theory.

But, if he is right, then as a man you should be holding out.

drinian• 17 years ago

Especially since he explicitly eschews "reductive" biological evidence.

three142• 17 years ago

That doesn't follow - presumably the desirable men are also getting what they want, less desirable but more devoted women. After all, the idea of the linked article is that a woman who does marry a desirable man would be likely to get a less desirable mate if she were to compete directly with other women.

acgourley2• 17 years ago

I don't know if you can assume early bidders are more devoted.

carterschonwald2• 17 years ago

The author is actually indireclty referring to the stable marriage problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem , don't bother reading the paper the slate writer links to, it has no substantive content), in which you have two sets of agents which we label the "men" and the "women". Each agent has a preference ordering of the members of the other gender. It is really easy to prove that you can then find an equilibrium arrangement by iterating the following procedure i = 1..n:

have each man propose to the i'th woman on his list (if he's not currently matched, otherwise he does nothing). the woman accepts if she's not matched yet or if the man ranks higher on her list than the previous guy she accepted.

if you think for a moment you can see (and prove) that this equilibria favors the men.

Also curiously enough, this exact algorithm is used to match med students with residency programs

rms2• 17 years ago

Steven Rudich has a good lecture on this: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15251/di...

http://www.discretemath.com

dominik• 17 years ago

Good slides; He mentions that the "largest, most successful dating service in the world" uses a computer to run the Traditional Marriage Algorithm. But which dating service is the "largest, most successful dating service in the world"?

wallflower3• 17 years ago

> 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.

I think this one quote from the article is important.

> What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called “deal breakers” change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads.

2nd quote from linked article in original piece - an interesting Lori Gottlieb article entitled "Marry Him!" which I'm considering forwarding to a few of my 30-ish single and still serial-dating female friends (considering the negative repercussions).

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/single-marry

cturner• 17 years ago

Good read.

"What I long for in a marriage is that sense of having a partner in crime."

I smiled as I read this because that's my exact choice of words when describing what I'm interested in.

Spyckie• 17 years ago

hmm is it romantic or pragmatic if you think of your spouse as a good friend/cofounder you can split work with and help each other out?

I'm beginning to see no point in love - only solid, mutually beneficial friendships.

dmm• 17 years ago

Most of those people sound really self-absorbed.

critic• 17 years ago

There's a simpler explanation than appealing to math the author admits not understanding: male attractiveness ages better.

A 40 year old man can be attractive to 20 year old women, but a 40 year old woman is rarely attractive to 20 year old men.

In other words, women past their prime who restrict themselves to mates their own age will may be in relatively low demand.

tlb3• 17 years ago

The opposite is true. Because women in their narrow age range of attractiveness get paired with men in a much broader age range of attractiveness, that would create a shortage of women. Say, if women 25-35 date men 30-45, there are 50% more men in that group.

or combining folk wisdom and math: d(half your age + 7) / d (age) < 1

However, the fact that men propose and women decide creates an inversion. Early marriages take decisive women and attractive men off the market, leaving beautiful women and schlubs. Hooray for graph theory!

miloshh• 17 years ago

Actually, I think critic above had it right. Sure, women are considered more attractive when 20-30, and get a lot of attantion from men in that age, much more than men do at any point in their life. After women get past 30, things simply get back to "normal", but to them this seems as a shortage. In fact, single women above 30 seem to be the only group that ever refers to a "shortage of suitable males" - in my experience, younger women and men are generally surprised as to why such thing should ever exist.

Furthermore, the theory that men are trying hard to marry, and the most attractive ones "succeed" to marry at a younger age, just does not seem to be realistic, especially not in modern society. There are good reasons for men not to marry early.

vaksel13• 17 years ago

the looks thing is so true, after 25 women lose their looks exponentially...sure there are a few "milfs" in the 40s who still look good, but these were the 10s in the 18s who had their pick of men.

time_management11• 17 years ago

Not quite, because different women look good at different ages.

Case in point: Michelle Obama looked fairly awkward as a teenager, but is beautiful in her 40s.

geebee2• 17 years ago

I agree. The thing to keep in mind is that this works against men as well as women, it just hits them at different points in their lives.

If women between the ages of 21 and 25 are interested in (and pursued by) men between the ages of 21 and 35+, while men between 21 and 25 are limited to women who are roughly the same age, then men will face a very difficult dating "market" in their early 20s, and women will experience a favorable one. As men and women age, the inevitable symmetry switches the situation - women between 35 and 40 are now competing for men who are pursuing women between the ages of, say, 25 and 40.

This is something to keep in mind when you hear that the dating world is unfair to women over 35. It's "unfair" to men too, just earlier in life.

old-gregg2• 17 years ago

You're right, life gets tougher for women after 30 but I am not following you in where does this benefit men?

According to your analysis a larger pool of men 21-40 are always competing for a smaller pool of attractive women 21-30, so if you're a single male, the ratio is always against you no matter how old you are.

And that's what I'm observing in real life. Perhaps I'm too young, but every public gathering I go to features a disproportional number of guys. And if you subtract overweight people from the picture, the ratio gets downright scary.

lacker• 17 years ago

A better explanation is that older men date younger women more often than older women date younger men. So there are extra old women and young men. No need for combinatorial game theory, just supply and demand.

spot• 17 years ago

the Gale-Shapley algorithm requires an authority (like the medical school establishment) to make it work. in real life, if you want to get married, you face a much more amorphous situation: a series of prospects, and with each a decision, "are they good enough"? i can't find it anymore, but iirc the answer was, to estimate the length of the game (say 20 years on the marriage market) and then just date for the first 1/e fraction of this time. and then say "yes" to the next person as good or better than the best you could have had during your trial/dating period. can anyone name the theorem or is this apocryphal?

carterschonwald2• 17 years ago

thats only a nice algorithm if you can go through the process several times, because i think that its a bound in expectation rather than point wise.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

37% rule

> Estimate how many people you’re likely to date in your life, dump the first 37% but keep a photo of your favourite on your bedside table. Then, marry the first one after that who beats your sweetheart! Of course, every rule has exceptions and sometimes you get an offer that’s too good to refuse, 37% or not. Sometimes, mathematics doesn’t have all the answers!

> Using this process, we find that we can be successful in selecting the best from a group of N by letting approximately 37% of the available positions go by, then selecting the first choice better than any seen before about 37% of the time. And this is true no matter how large N is! This is a strikingly high probability.

http://www.illuminatingscience.org/moving-house-part-i/

http://courses.ncssm.edu/math/Talks/PDFS/spouse.pdf

vaksel13• 17 years ago

I think additional part of the problem is that men are starting to realize that they really don't have anything to gain by being married. And they are so afraid of having to go through a divorce that can wipe them out, that they don't feel like trying. I mean a 50% divorce rate in this country, is pretty much a coin toss on whether or not you lose everything.

Seriously the only thing to gain by being married is saving a few bucks on taxes.

And you lose pretty much everything else. Every single married guy I know is MISERABLE. The sex pretty much stops within the first couple of years. And the woman gains mega weight, because now that they "got" you, they don't need to keep in shape. And then the whole bitchy wife comes out treating the guy as a second class citizen.

Marrying an American woman is pretty much the worst decision you can make. If you really want to get married, go find a nice European girl to marry, unlike American women, at least they know that marriage is not a one way street.

time_management11• 17 years ago

And they are so afraid of having to go through a divorce that can wipe them out, that they don't feel like trying.

Yep. It's an utterly broken system where the wife can decide she's not into her husband any more and walk away with half of his shit.

Every single married guy I know is MISERABLE. The sex pretty much stops within the first couple of years. And the woman gains mega weight, because now that they "got" you, they don't need to keep in shape.

I think this is far from universal. You seem to know some really unhappy married people.

It seems like this is more often the case among less educated couples who marry too young.

Why European? My observation is that E. European, Asian, Latin American, and African women are around the same level of quality: very high, because the educated women from those areas are cultured and would be at the pinnacle of refinement by the US standard. Next is W. Europe, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest. Urban sophisticate and minority American women are probably at the same level as Pacific NW ladies: not bad, and not nearly as bad as the reputation of American women would suggest. However, the suburban-bred office cows, raised on Sex and the City and burned out on college casual sex, are at the cellulite-ridden, lumpy, bottom. They're the ones who give American women a bad name. In truth, you can find quality women anywhere, even in the US... it's just much harder in some places.

There seems to be a criticality situation regarding the number of decent women in a given nationality. What might be at root a 2% shortage (in quality American women vs. men) blows up, on account of some sort of a positive feedback loop. The advantage conferred by the shortage causes (some) women to become spoiled, which further erodes the quality of the women, leading to more shortage, and so on.

eru• 17 years ago

Are you always that critical of your female compatriots?

ahpeeyem2• 17 years ago

"suburban-bred office cows"

that is gold :)

whacked_new5• 17 years ago

I find this situation very perplexing because there seems to be a grossly unsustainable "mating economy" here but I have never seen a discussion addressing it (possibly because they seem to be held by, almost exclusively, men).

But consider this scenario. There are a group of farmers, who only know how to plant food X. For one reason or another, food X starts tasting bad. Then, the farmers discover a food Y in the vicinity, and decide to eat that instead. Meanwhile, they still only know how to plant food X, and they also don't know what is really causing food X to taste bad, nor where or how food Y appeared, and why it tastes better.

In this case, who can really excuse themselves, claiming that they are really an unfortunate victim of unexpected food spoilage?

angstrom• 17 years ago

As one married coworker of mine recently put it "I don't care if I get a raise or a bonus because my wife will just spend it and I can't divorce her because that's just as expensive. The only joy she can't take away from me is writing clean, fast code."

tlb3• 17 years ago

Assuming you're in the US, you see a biased sample. That is, you see a complete cross section of American women, but only a select group of ambitious European women who emigrated as adults. They are here because they are serious about their careers, so they are more likely to believe in working hard to get ahead rather than getting by on their looks.

chadmalik• 17 years ago

Thats a great point and thats why I always take glorification of whatever society immigrants come from with a grain of salt. Immigrants are almost by definition more motivated than the normal people in whatever society they come from.

vaksel13• 17 years ago

I'm not really talking about immigrants. They can be even worse, if they came here before they were 20-25. Why? Because they pick up the way to act by watching MTV.

inglorian4• 17 years ago

I'm always surprised to see the extreme bitterness that comes out on these threads.

>>Every single married guy I know is MISERABLE. The sex pretty much stops within the first couple of years. And the woman gains mega weight, because now that they "got" you, they don't need to keep in shape. And then the whole bitchy wife comes out treating the guy as a second class citizen.

You do seem to know an awful lot of extremely unhappy couples. That's not my experience at all. For example, my parents are in their fifties and still have sex 3+ times a week, a fact I wish I didn't know. I know many other very happily married couples.

Obviously, my anecdotal evidence is just as useless as yours...I don't see how we can generalize that there is nothing to gain by being married.

The divorce rate is 50%...but the failure rate of startups is even higher. Starting a startup and failing can also ruin you financially and burn you out -- should we then assume that it is a stupid idea to start one?

>>Marrying an American woman is pretty much the worst decision you can make.

I am not an American girl, though I recently moved to the states. I am European myself -- and I have met just as many cultured, intelligent, kind American women as European ones. Why do you hate American women so much? Perhaps by "nice European girl" you are imagining an especially submissive woman? Perhaps your experience with American women only extends to suburban princesses and soccer moms?

Either way, I can assure you that your explicit hatred of American women ensures that you will never meet one that you will like.

tlb3• 17 years ago

> The divorce rate is 50%...but the failure rate of startups is even higher.

I'm not sure it is. When you see a high figure like 80% quoted for small companies failing, that's mainly due to restaurants. Serious startups founded by serious people rarely fail. (Getting acquired by a public company is like staying married your whole life.)

The failure rate of relationships is very high. If you date 20 people before getting married, that's a 95% failure rate. But it's still worth it.

Xichekolas4• 17 years ago

> I'm always surprised to see the extreme bitterness that comes out on these threads.

My guess (although I don't know vaksel at all) is that he is reflecting somewhat on his parents marriage.

I only say this because my parent's marriage was often so. While my mom has settled a bit with age, while I was growing up she used the threat of divorce as a weapon to settle arguments with my dad. She also tended to make stupid financial decisions (running up $8k in credit card debt on clothes when she had no job and without my dad knowing she even had a card) from which he would have to bail her out.

I often struggle with this innate fear I have that marriage means signing away all my earnings and being constantly treated as a child by my wife. For this reason I tend to choose extremely independent girlfriends, and ambition is one of my top attractors.

vaksel13• 17 years ago

See thats the thing, your anecdotal evidence doesn't disprove my assertion, it reinforces it. 40 years ago the women knew that for a successful marriage you needed a mutual effort. I'm talking about modern women, who know that divorce is a viable option, and that it is not worth trying when you have a big pay day in front of you.

I know a lot of unhappy men, not couples. In those relationships women seem to be fine. Why not? They sit on their asses doing nothing, while the man works his ass off trying to get the relationship humming again. Do I know some happy couples? Sure,but most of those have the european wife who wasn't raised on sex and the city.

Except the startup thing is your own doing and you know what you are getting into. With divorce, it can come out of nowhere, when you least expect it. And do you think taking a risk at 25 to do a startup is the same as losing everything you worked for at 30, 40, 50? At least with a startup there is a payoff at the end of the tunnel, with marriage you either gain nothing or lose everything.

Well maybe its just my personal experience, but the European girls seem to bring a lot more to relationships than the American girls. And its not a submissive thing, its more of a willingness to work things out.

The thing you need to realize is that the way the woman behaves when she is single or dating, is COMPLETELY different from the way she behaves when she is married. She doesn't need to hide who she truly is, because with the divorce option on the table she hit the jackpot. You think any of my friends would have married their wives if they acted the same way they act now? Hell no....hell one of them married his wife for the sole reason that she supposedly enjoyed having sex and couldn't get enough. That lasted exactly until they had their first kid, at which point she completely cut him off. The other, married his wife because she was supposedly the nicest girl he ever met, with that one she acted like bridezilla before the wedding, and seemed to have forgotten to turn that off afterwords.

Its not a hatred, its realism. I'll date American women, no problem. Because during the dating phase, they act just fine. The problem is, that for most of them its just an act until they tie the matrimonial knot, at which point the real them comes out, who you are stuck with.

old-gregg2• 17 years ago

inglorian, I really like your attitude and I can't add anything to this discussion since I never dated an American girl myself. However, I have a few friends in real estate circles and all of them agree that whenever they have a house on sale due to divorce, the most common cause by far is a male losing his high paying job.

I find it shocking and very telling fact about internal dynamics at most American families. You would think losing your job calls for your partner's support, while it seems to me that for significant number of American men losing a high-paying job likely means losing the family too.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 17 years ago

You can probably write him off as a misogynistic idiot.

I'm about to get divorced from my wife (we have discussed it and it will definitely happen, but we want to figure out asset distribution, child care, etc before we file Collaborative Divorce): I mention this to offer perspective.

The sex never stopped -- we're splitting up and still had sex three times in the last 24 hours (guys never seem to figure out that most women want sex as much as they do and if she loses interest, it's almost certain that he is part of the reason). My wife is sometimes bitchy but is not at all materialistic. She can be a royal pain in the ass, has a lot of bad habits and can be excruciatingly annoying at times. BUT SO AM I!!! This is the part he's missing: from the woman's perspective, these guys are probably just as bad. So "she can divorce him and take half his stuff." Did he get that stuff while they were married, sharing expenses, etc? Is it possible that it's actually reasonable that she have a proportion of what they acquired together? No, of course not, it's "his stuff." Waah. I can't take all my toys and go home!

The reality is that it is extremely rare for a long term relationship to end completely due to the faults of one person.

It's a lot easier to blame your life on someone else than it is to look inward and see the flaws in yourself.

Now let the downmods begin :-)

whacked_new5• 17 years ago

> Marrying an American woman is pretty much the worst decision you can make. If you really want to get married, go find a nice European girl to marry, unlike American women, at least they know that marriage is not a one way street.

I'm very interested in, comparatively speaking, the pros and cons of marrying an American man. If a society produces X kind of stereotypical woman, we may look for a Y kind of stereotypical man, which would be what?

electromagnetic9• 17 years ago

From a European perspective I'll give a guess. I've known girls from France, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland and IIRC Romania, and I'm from the UK. The general consensus is that the American Male are 'fat, ugly idiots'.

The only thing an American male has going for them in Europe is a foreign accent, currently being American is a con not a pro.

I've known many nice, intelligent and attractive Americans (both male and female) so I disagree with this point, but I'm sorry to say it's a common stereotype and not entirely inaccurate. It doesn't help that most tourists from America that I've met in Europe are very ignorant of everything.

I saw an American couple in a bistro in Paris getting the bitchiest treatment I've ever seen from a Parisian waiter, I've never even known them to be rude to a person before. I know where the stereotype is from though, they didn't know a single word of French and expected the waiter to know perfect English because they couldn't understand him speaking English. Well I get the same waiter, I try ordering in French and the man all but refuses to let me speak it and addresses me in English, reading me the specials and giving me better service than I ever had when I visited the USA.

Honestly, the French are magnificent waiters and polite to everyone if you show them respect. Even just saying bonjour and they'll be polite because you acknowledged the fact that you're sat in the heart of Paris and that they're French. The only rude person I met in 2 weeks was in a little cafe-restaurant on Boulevard Garibaldi, it was the Chef and I was trying to work out what he was saying because he wasn't even French so his accent was bizarre and after like 30 seconds the owner of the store came out back and started apologizing in perfect English.

dannyj2• 17 years ago

You sir, are an idiot..

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

"and"

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22you+sir+are+and+...

Jem• 17 years ago

Nice stereotyping.

dgabriel7• 17 years ago

Do you think that no American women read this site? Or do you think that you are so superior to us that your blanket statements, no matter how ignorant and harmful, are more important than treating us as if we were actual human beings?

Do all men stay in shape their whole marriage? Is pettiness always limited to the female partner? Please.

I work hard, I have always worked, and every woman I know works (aside from the ones still in school). I pay money to my ex-husband, NOT the other way around. Who are you, and how dare you?

whacked_new5• 17 years ago

In his defense, he's merely speaking out of Bayesian consequences. There's nothing to dare or not dare about. If you hear people get mugged in a neighborhood more than another, you'd avoid it and possibly speak out against it, but as a consequence, violate all the good people in the neighborhood.

What I feel is lacking, and very much so, is the other side of the perspective. (and by that I don't mean by merely pointing out that opinion is disrespectful; I mean by showing evidence for the opposite of the opinion)

jpcx01• 17 years ago

"How dare you"... sounds like something a woman would say

wynand• 17 years ago

While we're on anecdotes, I might as well add mine: I was in an almost 4 year relationship. During the last year I thought my girlfriend fit the mold described above perfectly. She was often downright unpleasant in ways that I never was.

I don't believe that in every quarrel, both parties are to blame.

But in the months after that relationship I realized that I had at least as much of a stake in the pain as she did.

It's a mistake to think that bitchiness is the only thing that hurts deeply. Neglect and intellectual intimidation and letting my body go were my sins and having experienced the first two myself (from another relationship) convinced me that there are many ways to make someone feel worthless.

Given that we men are humans who are as prone to irrationality, is there any reason why women should think better of marriage than we do?

ahoyhere2• 17 years ago

Big props to you for realizing your part, and having the guts to admit it.

That is the #1 indicator of a valuable human being.

electromagnetic9• 17 years ago

Your argument is laughable. Your first paragraph is entirely about you, that's patently obvious, so my question is why are you so fundamentally afraid of getting married and failing? You're on a site about start ups, hello more businesses than marriages fail and you can lose a lot more through bankruptcy than you can through alimony. Oh and guess what, there's prenups.

I'm married and I've never been happier. Since getting married I go out more, spend more time with friends and in fact have a lot more sex than I ever did before I met my wife. Do you even know if your married friends are actually miserable, or is that your assumption from the outside? Do you even know their spouse? Have you ever even spent time out with them when they're out with other married couples? You simply state they're miserable, with quite dramatic emphasis but not even a single piece of anecdotal evidence to back it up. Your comments are entirely clichéd and stereotyped.

Honestly, when I see a bitchy wife I also see a very spineless, ball-less husband. Also for the few wives that gain 'mega' weight, I also see far more husbands who are fat lazy pigs.

Oh and I am from Europe, if American males have problems with American females, they're going to be fucking dominated by European women. The divorce rate is lower in europe, only because it's socially unacceptable and in Italy your wife has the legal right to lie to police to protect an affair! I mean sure, marry a nice Italian girl, they're basically raised that if they're not getting it at home it's okay to get it somewhere else, so yeah don't worry you wont get divorced, but you certainly won't be the one having sex in that marriage either!

Please don't spout BS about Europe unless you actually know the cultures. Every European country has either a near 50% divorce rate, or you simply will not get divorced because your family and friends would cast you out. Losing 'everything' isn't the risk of losing 50% of your monetary value or income, losing everything is when you lose 50% of your money, your family, your friends and every person hence forth who you meet will judge you because you're divorced.

maxawaytoolong2• 17 years ago

Europe is a big and diverse place. At least 10 European countries have higher divorce rates than the USA, and many others are about the same. The cultural mores regarding marriage are much different in Italy than they are in Sweden. Thus it doesn't seem like finding a "nice european girl" is going to statistically help you avoid divorce.

European countries with low divorce rates generally have conservative laws regarding divorce. Spain was one of these. It was financially and legally prohibitive to get a divorce in Spain until 2007. When Spain liberalized its divorce laws, it had the highest divorce rate in Europe almost overnight.

On a side note, the divorce rate in the USA is lower than it has been in 40 years.

electromagnetic9• 17 years ago

IIRC it was last year (2008) that a judge in Italy ruled it legally acceptable for a wife to lie to the police to cover up adultery. I believe the police had to pay damages or something due to her adultery being revealed and ending her marriage.

I mean "nice european girl" is a fallacy. All the advertising on TV I see from the US uses Europe as an advertisement piece. I mean those BS high-definition sunglasses with 'modern european styling'... I'm sorry, I don't know a single European to wear anything that even looks like it and most wouldn't be seen dead in them. Then there's all the crap named 'Europe's finest', I'm sorry my fruit when I still lived in Europe came from South America!

There's this widely held perception in the US that European = Good, or at least thats what the advertisements explicitly state. It's a completely false perception.

The only problem with Americans is problems Americans caused. I mean the mere fact that Ayn Rand is universally known in the USA, and I'd never heard of her until I took a sociology course and she was highlighted in the US politics section and I believe my sociology teacher said "where america went wrong" after mentioning her politics.

ahoyhere2• 17 years ago

I'd like to note that bitching about no-good, do-nothing, deceptive, thieving, bitchy, fat women is like slapping on a sandwichboard sign that reads "Grade Z Beta Male Here!"

Complaining about it on an online forum merely adds a flashing light to this ensemble.

If every one of your friends married a woman like that, then maybe you need better friends. And you should look at yourself, too, because people are typically friends with people of the same social standing as themselves.

I long for a day when more people realize that while you may think that you're waving a flaming sword of righteousness, everybody else understands that such complaining just means you are too weak to do anything to change it.

tyn• 17 years ago

Why is it not the case that attractive men postpone their decision too, just as attractive women do?

jcl• 17 years ago

In isolated cases perhaps attractive men also postpone their decision, but I believe that the idealization given in the article is pretty close to reality: women decide and men settle for what they can get.

I recall reading about some research showing that overweight women actually have sex more often than their peers, which seems to support this theory. (http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2008/10/31/Overweight_women_h...)

miked2• 17 years ago

It's been a while since I read his explanation, but an economist -- I believe it was Tim Harford in _The Undercover Economist_, but it may have been Tyler Cowan -- has already solved this, and with a very different answer.

Several factors are operating. First, due to a higher death rate among males, the number of women begins to exceed the number of men (of a given age) starting at age 23. Next, there are about 10 times as many men in prison as women. Also, there seem to be rather more gay men than lesbian women. There are far more women in large US cities, where articles like this are written, than men (who are disproportionately rural). then, women like to "marry up", whereas men are willing to marry down.

Now comes the key point. Even a rather small discrepancy between supply and demand in an auction market can quickly drive prices thru the roof, or the floor. Great example: recent oil prices. Back when the economy was going well prices could shoot up rapidly as oil fields became exhausted and development of new ones was blocked. When the economy talked and demand dropped just a few percent, prices collapsed from $147 to $39, or some such. I read his account too quickly to fully follow it, and I'm sorry I can't remember it, but small-supply-imbalances-can-produce-huge-price-swings was the gist of it. Sorry, I don't have the book available to check it.

>> 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).

huherto2• 17 years ago

"Several factors are operating...". Also lot of men are ineligible. (Drink too much, Do not have a stable job, very unfaithful)

ardit33• 17 years ago

I think the author has never been Silicon Valley. It is a huge sausage fest in here, everywhere. San Jose is called Man Jose for a good reason. Smart and educated girls, that are also cute are rarely single.

I have so many great male friends that are single, and yet I don't know a good looking/smart girl that is single.

This is my major disappointment with the SF Bay Area.

miked2• 17 years ago

How things change. Not so many years ago SF was a nightmare for single women, thanks to the city's disproportionate number of gay men. I'm guessing things have evened up a lot.

The Eligible Bachelor Paradox

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