No divorces, no kids, no second marriages here.
allendowney.com/blog/2020/10/2…
Just "How many women, born in this decade, have ever married by this age?" — asked from 1940 to 2020.
Over 80 years there's a LOT of change in 20, 25, and 30 year olds' marriage prospects:
When the age of marriage first began to increase, men were still largely limited to marrying within the same age cohort, and largely still prepared to marry in their youth, despite needing to spend some more time and effort trying to find a wife.
But, while the average age of marriage for women to be married rose from 20 to merely 22 in 1980, the trajectory set in motion for women born from 1980 onwards is visibly different above. What happened?
Well, consider 2002 vs. 2018:
What was hard-hitting Harvard Business Review commentary in 2002 for late 70s early 80s birth cohort women in their 20s...was passé and satirized for 20 something women in 2018 from the late 80s early 90s cohort
The educational and professional landscape had greatly changed:
And what's happened to men?
Well.
'In 1960, 97% of men between...25 and 54, 86% of men 20+, had jobs.
Today, 1/9 men between 25 and 54, 1/5 from 20+ to retirement age aren't working - 3 times more than in 1960.'
milkenreview.org/articles/the-m…
Economists like to make lots of charts and mathematical models to explain why, but here's what I think we can be reasonable sure happened:
- Outsourcing
- Immigration
- Automation
- The Weakened Signal(?!)
dalrock.wordpress.com/2019/09/09/the…
On top of everything we've done to prioritize womens' education over mens' from pre-k to college, to totally feminize everything from the boardroom to the newsroom, and to outsource, automate, and import foreign competition for working men's jobs...the age of marriage kept rising
Recall our earlier chart about the age of marriage.
As the marriage age increased, alongside increased education and labor participation for women, with fewer males in college or in professional roles, social mores around promiscuity changed, too 🫤
Did men's feelings?
Divorces between 21 year olds in 1964 and divorces between 60 year olds in 2010 aren't happy, but...
...We can consider them a LOT less socially deleterious than divorces of people in their mid 30s-50s with kids, given the insane state of American family courts
What's likely happened to the 80s->90s cohort?
They were the most exposed to the divorces of parents, most encouraged to delay marriage in pursuit of education/careers, most encouraged to 'play the field' sexually, and most encouraged to look askance at traditional values.
How do young (and not so young) men and women evaluate each other? Not equivalently.
Our culture is very good at understanding the reasons young (and not so young) women might look askance at men in their age cohort as marital prospects.
It doesn't really think about this when it comes to men.
In fact, Social Conservatives are *especially* bad at it.
@WilliamJBennett (whom I believe is still alive: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B…) wrote this in 2011:
cnn.com/2011/10/04/opi…
Lots of familiar observations here.
What's to blame?
Men of course. Those boys - not big strong men, responsible family men like him - are ignoring a full life of WORK, MARRIAGE, and RELIGION and leaving these poor young women alone while they sadly toil at university and the office for MEN who don't even try!
If anything the Social Conservatives of yesteryear sound much like n-th wave of today Feminists talking about incels.
Why are there so many videogame obsessed, basement dwelling, NEETS? Are they *choosing* this over lots and lots of willing women who want to get married? Hmm.
dalrock.wordpress.com/2019/09/09/the…
"What should surprise us is not that men are slowly responding to the radical changes brought about by our still ongoing sexual revolution. What should surprise us is how many young men still focus their youth preparing for a role our society despises."
Let's take another look at this chart.
allendowney.com/blog/2020/10/2…
The function the author uses has an optimistic projection jump for the 90s cohort. What if that doesn't happen?
By my guesstimate, when 90s cohort women are in their 40s, only about 35% will have married.
Why do I think this? Consider women at 28 years old.
Born in the 1940s, 87% would have married once.
In the 1950s, 80%
in the 60s, 70%
in the 70s, 63%
in the 80s, 55%
...
in the 90s, 31%
It's also the case that men in a position to marry from their early 20s to early 30s, the same 90s cohort of men *may well consider 2000s cohort women*.
I suspect there are a few cases:
1. Men who had no issue getting laid
2. Men who did, but matured/improved
3. Religious men
I would wager that for reasons ranging from divorce risk avoidance, to personal fussiness, resentment, relative sexual inexperience, etc. 90s cohort Men in a 'buyer's market' position wrt. marriage as 90s cohort women age will often opt for the lower end/2000s women
but also bc:
pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014…
2014. It's worsened since.
The picture of a married mom and dad raising their kids together is going to be a rare, exceptional thing within your lifetime.
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