Young, male, and single

 

The Babylonian Marriage Market, by Edwin Long (1829-1891). There are too many young men on the mate market, particularly in the White American community.

 

It sucks being young, male, and single. Don't think so? Go to the Interactive Singles Map of the United States and see how it looks for the 20 to 39 age group. Almost everywhere single men outnumber single women.

And the real picture is worse. For one thing, the imbalance is greater among singles without children. This is not a trivial factor, since single mothers are "single" only in the sense of being available for sexual relations. They are still raising offspring from a previous relationship and many are not interested in having more children.

Then there's polygamy—or "polyamory," to use the preferred term—where a minority of men controls sexual access to a larger number of women. If we compare the 1940-1949 and 1970-1979 cohorts of American adults, we find an increase in the number of median lifetime partners from 2.6 to 5.3 among women and from 6.7 to 8.8 among men (Liu et al., 2015). Because this figure is more variable for men than for women, young women are more likely to be sexually active than young men. This is crudely seen in infection rates for chlamydia—the most common sexually transmitted disease. Hispanic Americans still show the traditional pattern of greater sexual activity among men than among women, the rates being 7.24% of men and 4.42% of women. White Americans display the reverse: 1.38% of men and 2.52% of women (Miller et al., 2004).

Finally, there’s a racial angle. This sex ratio is more skewed among White Americans than among African Americans, mainly because the latter have a lower sex ratio at birth and a higher death rate among young men.

It's hard to avoid concluding that a lot of young white men are shut out of the marriage market ... or any kind of heterosexual relationship. This wife shortage was once thought to be temporary, being due to baby-boomer men getting divorced and marrying younger women from the smaller "baby bust" cohort. With time, they would get too old to compete with young men, and the problem should resolve itself.

Today, the crest of the baby boom is entering the seventh decade of life, yet the update to the Interactive Singles Map shows no change to the gender imbalance. So what gives? It appears that demographers have focused too much on the baby-boomer effect and not enough on other factors that matter just as much and, more importantly, show no signs of going away. These factors can be summarized as follows.

Re-entry of older men into the mate market

We have a mate market where 20 to 50 year old men are competing for 20 to 40 year old women. That in itself is nothing new. But something else is.

The baby boom eclipsed an equally important but longer-term trend: more and more men are living past the age of 40. With or without the baby boom, we’ll still see large numbers of older men getting divorced and marrying younger women. The cause isn’t just liberal divorce laws. It’s also the fact we have far more older guys out there as a proportion of the population.

Sure, we will also see younger men pairing up with "cougars" but there are limits to that option, as noted in a New Zealand study:

The male partner may want to partner up with someone younger or have children, which may not be possible with an older woman (for physical reasons or because she chooses not to have (more) children). The younger male partner may not want to become a step-father to existing children. Research has shown that childbearing can be the ultimate deal breaker in this kind of relationship. (Lawton and Callister, 2010)

Persistence of the imbalanced sex ratio at birth

About 105 males are born for every 100 females among people of European origin. This sex ratio used to decline to parity during childhood because of higher infantile mortality among boys. It then declined even farther in early adulthood because of war, industrial accidents, and other hazards. This isn't the distant past. If you talk with women who came of age in the postwar era, they will tell you about their fears of remaining single past the age of thirty. At that age, very few single men were left to go around.

Well, things have changed. The skewed sex ratio at birth is now persisting well into adulthood, thanks to modern medicine and the relative peace that has prevailed since 1945. Women begin to outnumber men only in the 35-39 age group in the United States and in the 40-44 age group in the United Kingdom.

Equalization of male and female same-sex preference

Historically, same-sex preference was more common among men than among women. This gender gap appears to be closing, according to a recent study:

The percent distributions were quite similar for men and women; however, a higher percentage of men identified as gay (1.8%) compared with women who identified as gay/lesbian (1.4%), and a higher percentage of women identified as bisexual (0.9%) compared with men (0.4%). (CDCP, 2014, p. 5) 

Disparities in outmarriage

At present, there are more White American women outmarrying than White American men, particularly in younger age groups. This disparity is mainly in marriages with African American men, there being no gender difference in marriages with Hispanic Americans and the reverse gender difference in marriages with Asian Americans (Jacobs and Labov, 2002; Passel et al., 2010). Overall, this factor further skews the ratio of young single men to young single women in the White American community. 

This disparity isn't new. What is new is its extent, for both legal and common-law marriages. An idea may be gleaned from statistics on children born to White American women, specifically the proportion fathered by a non-White partner. For the U.S. as a whole the proportion in 2013 was between 11% and 20% (the uncertainty is due to 190,000 births for which the father's race was not stated). By comparison, the proportion in 1990 was between 5% and 13% (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013; see also Silviosilver, 2015).

Whenever this issue comes up for discussion, there are often reassurances that the disparity will disappear in a post-racial world that has been cleansed of "White privilege." I'm not so sure. The European female phenotype seems to be very popular, and this was so even when white folks were geopolitical weaklings. Today, the term “white slavery” is merely a synonym for prostitution, but it originally meant the enslavement of fair-skinned women for sale to clients in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.  At the height of this trade, between 1500 and 1650, over 10,000 Eastern Europeans were enslaved each year for export (Kolodziejczyk, 2006; Skirda, 2010). The overwhelming majority were young women and pre-pubertal boys who were valued for their physical appearance. And yet they were powerless.

No, I don't think this kind of preference will disappear as whites lose "privilege."

Exit strategies

So more and more young men are being left on the shelf, particularly in White America. How do they cope? Mostly by turning to porn from Internet websites, videocassettes, or magazines. Love dolls are another option and may grow in popularity as they become more human-like, not only physically but also in their ability to talk and interact.

Another option is outmarriage. In the past, this trend largely concerned older men marrying East Asian or Hispanic women, but we’re now seeing plenty of young men outmarrying via Internet dating sites. Despite the local supply of single women in the African American community, there is a much stronger tendency to look abroad, generally to women in Eastern Europe, South America, or East Asia.

Then there's gender reassignment, which means either entering the other side of the mate market or tapping into the lesbian market. It’s a viable strategy, all the more so because many white boys can be turned into hot trans women. I'm not saying that some young men actually think along those lines, but gender reassignment is functioning that way.

Finally, there's "game." My attitude toward game is like my attitude toward gender reassignment. Both are attempts to push the envelope of phenotypic plasticity beyond its usual limits, and neither can fully achieve the desired result. A lot of boys aren't wired for game, and there are good reasons why, just as there are good reasons why some people are born male. Male shyness isn't a pathology. It's an adaptation to a social environment that values monogamy and high paternal investment while stigmatizing sexual adventurism. Our war on male shyness reflects our perverse desire to create a society of Don Juans and single mothers.

But if game works, why not? Whatever floats your boat.

Conclusion

Ideally, this gender imbalance should be dealt with at the societal level, but I see little chance of that happening in the near future. If anything, public policy decisions will probably worsen the current imbalance. Changes to public policy generally result from a long process that begins when people speak up and articulate their concerns, yet it's unlikely that even this first step will be taken any time soon. Young single men prefer to remain silent and invent nonexistent girlfriends. They also tend to be marginal in the main areas of discourse creation, like print and online journalism, TV, film, and radio production, book writing, etc. Leaf through any magazine, and you'll probably see more stuff about the problems of single women.

So this imbalance will likely continue to be addressed at the individual level through individual strategies.

References 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014). Sexual Orientation in the 2013 National Health Interview Survey: A Quality Assessment, Vital and Health Statistics, 2(169), December

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02_169.pdf 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). Vital Statistics Online

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access/Vitalstatsonline.htm  (for discussion, see Silviosilver, 2015 http://www.unz.com/pfrost/the-last-push-back-against-liberalism/#comment-896920) 

Jacobs, J.A. and T.B. Labov. (2002). Gender differentials in intermarriage among sixteen race and ethnic groups, Sociological Forum, 17, 621-646.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021029507937 

Kolodziejczyk, D. (2006). Slave hunting and slave redemption as a business enterprise: The northern Black Sea region in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, Oriente Moderno, 86, 1, The Ottomans and Trade, pp. 149-159.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25818051?sid=21105312761261&uid=3737720&uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=4 

Lawton, Z. and P. Callister. (2010). Older Women-Younger Men Relationships: the Social Phenomenon of 'Cougars'. A Research Note, Institute of Policy Studies Working Paper 10/02

http://ips.ac.nz/publications/files/be0acfcb7d0.pdf 

Liu, G., S. Hariri, H. Bradley, S.L. Gottlieb, J.S. Leichliter, and L.E. Markowitz. (2015). Trends and patterns of sexual behaviors among adolescents and adults aged 14 to 59 years, United States, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 42, 20-26.

http://journals.lww.com/stdjournal/Abstract/2015/01000/Trends_and_Patterns_of_Sexual_Behaviors_Among.6.aspx 

Miller, W.C., C.A. Ford, M. Morris, M.S. Handcock, J.L. Schmitz, M.M. Hobbs, M.S. Cohen, K.M. Harris, and J.R. Udry. (2004). Prevalence of chlamydial and gonococcal infections among young adults in the United States, JAMA, 291, 2229-2236.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=198722

Passel, J.S., W. Wang, and P. Taylor. (2010). One-in-seven new U.S. marriages is interracial or interethnic, Pew Research Center, Social & Demographic Trends,

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/06/04/ii-overview-2/

Skirda, A. (2010). La traite des Slaves. L'esclavage des Blancs du VIII^e au XVIII^e siècle, Paris, Les Éditions de Paris Max Chaleil. 

Soma, J. (2013). Interactive Singles Map

http://jonathansoma.com/singles/

 

The novelty effect: a factor in mate choice

 

Series of facial images from clean-shaven to full beard (Janif et al., 2014)

For the past thirty years, the tendency has been to study sexual attractiveness from the observer's standpoint, i.e., we choose mates on the basis of what's good for us. We therefore unconsciously look for cues that tell us how healthy or fertile a potential mate may be. But what about the standpoint of the person being observed? If you want to be noticed on the mate market, it's in your interest to manipulate any mental algorithm that will make you noticeable, including algorithms that have nothing to do with mating and exist only to keep track of unusual things in the observer's surroundings. If you're more brightly colored or more novel in appearance, you will stand out and thus increase your chances of finding a mate.

We see this with hair color. In one study, men were shown pictures of attractive women and asked to choose the one they most wanted to marry. One series had equal numbers of brunettes and blondes, a second series 1 brunette for every 5 blondes, and a third 1 brunette for every 11 blondes. It turned out that the scarcer the brunettes were in a series, the likelier any one brunette would be chosen (Thelen, 1983). Another study likewise found that Maxim cover girls were disproportionately light blonde or dark brown, and much less often the more usual dark blonde or light brown (Anon, 2008). This novelty effect may be seen in sales of home interior colors over the past half-century: preference for one color rises until satiated, then falls and yields to preference for another (Stansfield & Whitfield, 2005).

The novelty effect seems to apply not only to colors but also to other visible features. In a recent study, participants were shown a series of faces with different degrees of beardedness. A clean-shaven face was preferred to the degree that it was rare, being most appreciated when the other faces had beards. Heavy stubble and full beards were likewise preferred to the degree that they were rare (Janif et al., 2014).

The authors conclude:

 

Concordant effects of frequency-dependent preferences among men and women might reflect a domain-general effect of novelty. Frost [20] suggested the variation in female blond, brown and red hair between European populations spread, geographically, from where they first arose, via negative frequency-dependent preferences for novelty. There is some evidence that men's preferences increase for brown hair when it is rare [21] and for unfamiliar (i.e. novel) female faces [22]. (Janif et al., 2014)

 

The authors go on to suggest that the quest for novelty may drive the ups and downs of fashion trends. A new fashion will rise sharply in popularity when it is still unfamiliar to most people. As the novelty wears off, its popularity will peak and then decline, especially if it faces competition from a more recent fashion.

There are certainly limits to the novelty effect—something can be novel but also disgusting—but it seems to be more general than previously thought.

 

References

Anon. (2008). Maxim's audience prefers brunettes; distribution is bimodal. Gene Expression, July 6, 2008.  http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/07/maxims-audience-prefers-brunettes.php  

Frost P. (2006). European hair and eye color: a case of frequency-dependent sexual selection? Evolution & Human Behavior, 27, 85-103.

Frost, P. (2008). Sexual selection and human geographic variation, Special Issue: Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society, Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2(4),169-191. http://137.140.1.71/jsec/articles/volume2/issue4/NEEPSfrost.pdf  

Janif, Z.J., R.C. Brooks, and B.J. Dixson. (2014). Negative frequency-dependent preferences and variation in male facial hair, Biology Letters, 10, early view

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/4/20130958

Little A.C., L.M. DeBruine, B.C. Jones. (2013). Sex differences in attraction to familiar and unfamiliar opposite-sex faces: men prefer novelty and women prefer familiarity, Archives of Sexual Behavior, early view

Stansfield, J., and Whitfield, T.W.A. (2005) Can future colour trends be predicted on the basis of past colour trends? An empirical investigation, Color Research & Application, 30(3), 235-242. 

Thelen, T.H. (1983). Minority type human mate preference, Social Biology, 30, 162-180.

Our brideprice culture

Dr. Griskevicius speaking on the mating game. The economic consequences are big. (source)

The mate market isn’t what it used to be. As late as the mid-1970s, single women outnumbered single men at all reproductive ages. A reversal then took place throughout the Western world. The “operational sex ratio” slipped from male scarcity to parity and then to a male surplus by the late 1980s. Why? The immediate reason was the large number of divorced male baby-boomers reentering the mate market … and competing for a smaller number of female baby-busters (Ni Bhrolchain & Sigle-Rushton, 2005; Pedersen, 1991).

Yet behind this immediate reason stood two longer-term causes. First, divorce had become much easier. Men were now freer to act on an unconscious command that all men are born with: Look for a younger wife if your current one no longer looks fertile … assuming of course you’ve managed to survive into your fifth decade of life.

This leads us to the second cause. By the late 20th century, male mortality had greatly declined. More men were now living throughout the entire reproductive age bracket. Keep in mind that around 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. In the past, this sex ratio balanced out within the first few years of life because of higher mortality among male infants. By the 1980s, it wasn’t balancing out until the mid-40s or even later.

Will the operational sex ratio return to normal in the future? No, but it may stop getting worse. The trend toward male longevity seems to have almost maxed out for all reproductive ages. And fewer older men will be reentering the mate market—the baby boomers are getting a bit old for that sort of thing. But then we’ll probably also see more polygyny of the non-serial kind. Simultaneous polygyny is hard to measure, since it’s illegal, but it seems to be a growing phenomenon. The incidence of gonorrhea and chlamydial infection is now higher in women than in men, an indication that the population of promiscuous individuals is disproportionately female (Miller et al., 2004).

Even if we ignore unofficial polygyny, the “official” ratio of single men to single women shows no signs of declining, even at older ages (Soma, 2008). In Germany, single men now outnumber single women up to the age of 60 (Glowsky, 2007). To make a long story short, young nubile women are a limited resource. The more you deregulate the marriage market and the more you reduce male mortality, the fewer of them there’ll be to go around.

And the consequences?

As men become increasingly outnumbered on the mate market, what will be the consequences? Until recently, research has focused on the social effects. Permanently single men have less of a stake in maintaining the status quo and tend to be drawn to revolutionary movements of one sort or another (Hudson & Den Boer, 2002).

Now it appears that there are also economic consequences:

Findings show that male-biased sex ratios (an abundance of men) lead men to discount the future and desire immediate rewards. Male-biased sex ratios decreased men’s desire to save for the future and increased their willingness to incur debt for immediate expenditures. Sex ratio appears to influence behavior by increasing the intensity of same-sex competition for mates. Accordingly, a scarcity of women led people to expect men to spend more money during courtship, such as by paying more for engagement rings. (Griskevicius et al, 2012)

In the above study, the operational sex ratio (ratio of adult unmarried men to adult unmarried women) was compared to the number of credit cards owned and the amount of consumer debt for 134 American cities. Both indices significantly correlated with the operational sex ratio. By way of example, the authors point to two cities in Georgia:

Macon, Georgia, and Columbus, Georgia, are two cities in the southeastern United States that are less than a hundred miles apart. Both cities share a similar historical heritage and economic climate. Despite these similarities, the residents of each city have drastically different spending habits: The average consumer debt of people living in Columbus is an astounding 2.7 standard deviations higher than that of people living in Macon—a difference of $3,479 per consumer […]

 

We suggest that this difference in debt might be linked to an often overlooked difference between the two cities: the ratio of single adult men to women in each area. Whereas in Macon there are only 0.78 single men for every woman, in Columbus there are 1.18 single men for every woman. (Griskevicius et al, 2012)

The United States, like most of the Western world, is moving from a dowry culture to a brideprice culture (Sailer, 2008). Single men now have to pay to get a wife, and the price is getting steeper.

But this change isn’t just a matter of “Who pays the money?” It’s also “How is it spent?” A dowry is an investment in the future. It often takes the form of a down-payment by the bride’s family on the newlyweds’ home. In contrast, a bride price usually goes toward immediate consumption. A single man has to spend more on dating, which itself is becoming a longer, multiyear process. He’ll be expected to pay off his bride’s credit card debt. And he’ll have to spend more on the wedding.

The difference between dowry and bride price reflects a difference in mate-choice criteria. Whereas men judge women on the basis of youth and perceived fertility, women judge men on the basis of perceived social and economic status. A shift towards bride price thus compels men to boost their image by spending more now and leaving less for the future.

There is a widespread belief that consumers will save and pay off their debts if offered the right economic incentives, i.e., higher interest rates, tax deductions, etc. This belief ignores the changes that have occurred to the dynamics of mating over the last few decades. Men will keep on going heavily into debt because that’s the price of getting a mate. Women will continue to borrow beyond their means, knowing that they can convert their debt burden into bride price. 

References

Glowsky, D. (2007). Why do German men marry women from less developed countries? SOEP papers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research #61
http://www.dix.de/soeppapers

Griskevicius, V., J.M. Tybur, J.M. Ackerman, A.W. Delton, T.E. Robertson, & A.E. White. (2012). The financial consequences of too many men: Sex ratio effects on saving, borrowing, and spending, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(1), 69-80.

Griskevicius, V. (2012). Youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY706EGtUnY

Hudson, V.M., & A. Den Boer. (2002). A surplus of men, a deficit of peace. Security and sex ratios in Asia’s largest states, International Security, 26, 5-38.

Miller, W.C., C.A. Ford, M. Morris, M.S. Handcock, J.L. Schmitz, M.M. Hobbs, M.S. Cohen, K.M. Harris, & J.R. Udry. (2009). Prevalence of chlamydial and gonococcal infections among young adults in the United States, Journal of the American Medical Association, 291, 2229-2236.

Ni Bhrolchain, M. & W. Sigle-Rushton. (2005). Partner supply in Britain and the U.S. Estimates and gender contrasts, Population, 60, 37-64.

Pedersen, F.A. (1991). Secular trends in human sex ratios: Their influence on individual and family behavior, Human Nature, 2, 271-291.

Sailer, S. (2008). Bachelorettes in debt – the new reverse dowry system, Steve Sailer’s iSteve blog, November 7  http://isteve.blogspot.ca/2008/11/bachelorettes-in-debt-new-reverse-dowry.html

Soma. (2008). The new interactive singles map http://www.xoxosoma.com/singles/