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/

 

China and interesting times ...

In North America and Western Europe, the past forty years have seen a radical shift in the marriage market. Before, there were too few single men, particularly past the age of 25. Now, there are too many at all reproductive ages … and even beyond.

A similar shift has occurred in East Asia, in part for similar reasons. First, with the dramatic reduction in male mortality, especially male infantile mortality, the sex ratio at birth (normally 105 boys per 100 girls) now persists to 50 years of age and beyond. Second, with liberal divorce laws, older men can more easily re-enter the marriage market and remarry with younger women. Finally, there is a synergy between these two trends. With many more men living into their 40s and 50s, younger men have to reckon with a source of sexual competition that never existed before.

But East Asian societies face another reason for the steady rise in the ratio of single males to single females: a higher sex ratio at birth. To begin with, this ratio seems naturally higher among East Asians, i.e., in the range of 107 males / 100 females. As elsewhere, this higher ratio is now lasting well into adulthood.

To make things worse, the sex ratio at birth has been steadily rising in some East Asian countries because many parents are now using ultrasound technology to abort female fetuses. In China, this ratio has risen from 1.07 in 1980 to 1.18 in 2005 (Poston & Zhang, 2009). Similar increases have been reported from South Korea and Taiwan (Hudson & Den Boer, 2002).

The result? A worsening wife shortage throughout much of East Asia. With not enough prospective brides in their home countries, more and more East Asian men are looking elsewhere. In South Korea, international marriages rose from 4.8% of all marriages in 2001 to 13.6% in 2005. In Taiwan, the rise has been even more dramatic: 32% of all marriages in 2003.

Unlike the situation in North America and Western Europe, governments are recognizing this problem as something to be dealt with and not simply ignored:

In both Korea and Japan, there is concern to maintain ethnic homogeneity, which leads to a basically conservative stance by the government with regard to international marriages, but at the same time in both countries, there are groups of men who are seen to be missing out in the domestic marriage market (in particular, the low educated, and farmers in certain regions of the country) who are seen to require assistance in finding brides internationally. The end result is interesting: the promotion in Korea of marriages between Korean farmers and Korean Chinese women who, although foreigners, are at least of the same ethnicity […]; the involvement, in Japan, of local government in mail order bride programmes in areas such as rural northern Honshu where there was a perceived crisis in the marriage market … (Jones & Shen, 2008)

East Asian governments thus tend to promote international marriage while ensuring that the brides-to-be are physically and culturally similar to their own populations. Unfortunately, the pool of ethnically similar women lies almost entirely in China, which itself is facing a wife shortage. In the not-so-distant future, the Chinese government will probably halt this emigration, or it will simply dry up of its own accord.

What then? Will East Asian governments allow their bachelors to look farther afield? Or will they attack the problem at its source? Will they start paying women to have daughters in order to bring the sex ratio back to parity?

In this, China is in the worst situation. On the one hand, it has the most unbalanced sex ratio in East Asia. On the other, its bachelors are poorly positioned in the international marriage market, since they earn much less money than do bachelors in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Where can they go to find wives?

The most likely place seems to be sub-Saharan Africa, with Ethiopia being especially likely. With their relatively light skin and fine features, Ethiopian women seem to be the most attractive candidates. Chinese entrepreneurs are also well established in that country. This topic came up on an online thread about Chinese-Ethiopian marriages. One Chinese commenter wrote:

In China the Ethiopian women is revered as a Holy God. Every day we say prayer that God will send us an Ethiopian woman for marriage so that our children are smart, beautiful, and clever like Ethiopia.

Two Ethiopian commenters added:

Nice.. Heheh but i think Ethiopian woman date chinese. If you go and see Ethiopia, many chinese dating Ethiopian.... :)

Overall, considering the shortage of brides in China, I am all for Sino Ethiopian pact to have as many intermarriages as possible.

If the example of South Korea and Taiwan is any indication, African bride immigration to China should increase exponentially and level off only when the ‘market’ reaches saturation. And remember: China has 29-33 million young surplus males (Hudson & Boer, 2002). Bachelors tend to look for foreign wives when they have friends and acquaintances who have already gone this route, i.e., the ‘effect of example’. There is thus a strong potential for exponential growth with no immediate limit, other than the limits imposed by the Chinese government.

And it’s unlikely that the Chinese government will impose any. First, any restrictive legislation would be seen as being racist by a continent that supplies a growing share of China’s raw materials. Second, the Chinese government tends to see international marriages positively, both as a form of ‘soft power’ to increase influence abroad and as a way to reduce discontent among young Chinese bachelors.

Thus, in the near future, we may see the emergence of a partly African minority in China, numbering perhaps in the tens of millions. This is all the likelier because the African brides will tend to have higher fertility than native Chinese women. Of course, the Chinese government could step in to enforce the 1-child policy, but this policy is only weakly enforced now and any efforts to toughen enforcement would be perceived as being racist … not only by the couples involved but also by China’s suppliers of raw materials.

With China being constrained by the dictates of the global marketplace, in this and in other areas of domestic policy, we may eventually see a nasty reaction against globalization that pits the Chinese people against their government and their increasingly globalist business class. At the very least, China will enter a social environment where racism and colorism are real day-to-day concerns, and not simply theoretical ones.

References

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

Jones, G. & H-H. Shen. (2008). International marriage in East and Southeast Asia: trends and research emphases, Citizenship Studies, 12, 9-25.

Poston, D.L. & L. Zhang. (2009). China’s unbalanced sex ratio at birth : how many surplus boys have been born in China since the 1980s? in J.D. Tucker & D.L. Poston (eds.) Gender Policy and HIV in China, The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis 22.

The new marriage market and the future

High sex ratio cohorts are likely, virtually by definition, to have greater numbers of males who fail outright to establish stable couple relationships. Moreover, the relationships that many males do establish in high sex ratio periods may be tenuous and subject to jealousies, rivalries, and the threat of displacement by other, more highly “qualified” males. (Pedersen, 1991)

When Pedersen wrote the above almost two decades ago, he did not exactly fear the new marriage market of too many men chasing too few women. In fact, his prognosis was largely upbeat. There would be “lower divorce rates”, “greater marital stability”, “enhanced marital satisfaction for women”, “greater commitment by males to procurement of economic resources”, “greater willingness by men to engage in active parenting”, and “increase in fertility”. This generally rosy outlook, however, also included the prospect of increased male violence.

Has time proved Pedersen wrong? Well, he was wrong about the positive outcomes. Perhaps he was wrong here too. Look at regions where too many men chase too few women: East Asia, parts of India and, increasingly, the Western world. These regions generally have stability, order, and low crime rates. Conversely, too few men chase too many women in U.S. inner cities and the former Soviet Union.

But such comparisons may be confounded. Stable, orderly societies also tend to be those that value men and unwittingly seek to increase the sex ratio. One reason why East Asian societies are stable and orderly is that their men are good providers. Because they work and provide for their families, parents want to have as many sons as possible—because a son will take care of them in their old age. Hence the high rate of female feticide.

Similarly, one reason why Western societies are stable and orderly is because they value human life so much, even to the point of imposing restrictions on men that would be considered demeaning in other societies (wearing of seatbelts, regulations on cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, etc.). Hence the low rate of male mortality.

Still, what evidence is there that high sex ratios do lead to male violence? We see men among us who stay celibate for a long time without endangering public order. There is the lifelong bachelor who leads a quiet productive life. There is the immigrant who remains single for 10 to 20 years while he saves up money, buys a home, and builds up his business.

These examples, however, differ on one point from the new society we’re entering—where over a third of all men will be frozen out of marriage and fatherhood. In the past, a lifelong bachelor was often a self-selected individual with a low sex drive and probably low testosterone levels. As for the immigrant who stays single for 10 to 20 years, he would eventually bring out a wife from the old country—typically 10 to 20 years his junior. Neither example violates the social contract we once offered young men: work hard, obey the law, and you will become a full-fledged member of society.

The problem begins when this social contract is no longer honored. Consider China, where the sex ratio has progressively risen since the mid-1980s—after the adoption of the one-child policy and the advent of prenatal sex testing. Today, 97% of all unmarried Chinese aged 28-49 are male. These men make up 72-75% of a large floating population that numbers between 100 and 150 million (Hudson & Boer, 2002, p. 29). Variously described as ‘migrants,’ ‘transients,’ or ‘bare branches,’ they account for a disproportionate share of crime, especially violent crime:

In Beijing, 44% of the crimes solved by the police were committed by transients. In Shanghai, this rate has been continually rising from 10% in the mid-1980s to 60%, even 80% in some districts, by 1995. … Moreover, our study found that many crimes committed by transient people are senseless and ruthless. An argument over a word can lead to a cold-blooded fight; burglars often kill the victims or witnesses on the scene if the offense is observed; highway robbery, rape, and kidnapping usually end with the victims’ death; and a complaint about the poor quality of goods sold by transient vendors can cause injury in a severe physical assault. (Hudson & Boer, 2002, p. 32)

A similar trend has appeared in the northwestern states of India, where sex ratios have reached particularly high levels:

Indeed there is a statistically significant relationship between violent crime rates and the sex ratio in Indian states. Sen notes that “extensive interdistrict contrasts … show a strong—and statistically very significant—relation between the female-male ratio in the population and the scarcity of violent crimes.

… The strongest correlation found was between murder and sex ratio, which were inversely related. As the authors note, “This correlation is very robust: no matter which other variables are included or excluded from the regression, we found that the female-male ratio remained highly significant, always with a negative sign. Further, the size of the coefficient of the female-male ratio is quite large” (Hudson & Boer, 2002, pp. 34-35)

Hudson and Boer (2002) argue that an excess of males increases not only violent crime and internal instability but also the probability that a country will go to war. For the government, war helps ease the tensions created by having too many single men, if only by killing them off. For a single man, war is a chance to enhance his social status and improve his access to women.

… the worst-case scenario implies that China may have close to 40 million young adult bare branches to spare in twenty years, and that the government may at that point ardently wish to see them give their lives in pursuit of a national interest. The alternative is to allow them to remain a threat to national interest, which may increasingly be seen as an untenable policy position by the government (Hudson & Boer, 2002, pp. 36-37)

Another scenario is that China will export single males and import single females. In recent years, a popular destination for Chinese emigrants has been Africa, partly because of its lax immigration laws and partly because of its wealth of undeveloped raw resources. This Chinese diaspora is estimated to range in size from 500,000 to 750,000 (Mohan & Kale, 2007). To the extent that single males take this route, there will inevitably be intermarriage that may alter China demographically when they go home.

Such a scenario may resemble what is already happening in South Korea, where 13.6% of all marriages now involve foreign brides (Lee et al., 2006). At first, these brides were largely ethnic Koreans from China. Preferences are now shifting toward Southeast Asians:

Another 18 percent of foreign wives are from other Asian countries, especially Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand. According to one international marriage agency, provincial bachelors prefer Southeast Asian women despite their darker skin (racial differences are still subject to stares and comment here, as any expatriate knows) because ethnic Korean women from China have acquired a reputation of melting away into the cities to work after using their new husband only to get a visa. (source)

In one rural county, 3 out of 10 marriages are with foreign women, mostly Southeast Asians. Likewise, a growing proportion of school-age children are of mixed origin:

In North Jeolla province there are 755 biracial students, 700 in elementary schools, 44 in middle schools and 11 in high schools. Four out of eight new students entering Mupung Elementary School in Muju next year are biracial. (source)

Some projections suggest that children of mixed parentage will account for 30% of South Korean births by 2020 (Wikipedia – Immigration to South Korea).

This trend has not gone unnoticed in the ‘other’ Korea. The North Korean press has recently condemned it as “an unpardonable bid to negate the homogeneity of the nation, make South Korea multiracial and Americanize it.” (source)

Both of these trends will probably spread to China, i.e., growing numbers of international marriages and increasing nationalist opposition. That country has an even worse gender imbalance and has adopted the same Western ethos of autonomous individuals being free to pursue their own happiness—even when such pursuits impose costs on everyone else.

The main difference is that China’s standard of living is lower than South Korea’s. Chinese bachelors will probably look for wives in even poorer places, particularly Cambodia, Indonesia, and Africa.

References

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

Lee, Y-J., D-H. Seol, & S-N. Cho. (2006). International marriages in South Korea: the significance of nationality and ethnicity, Journal of Population Research, November 1, 2006.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-170018371/international-marriages-south-korea.html

Mohan, G., & D. Kale. (2007). The invisible hand of South-South globalisation: Chinese migrants in Africa, A Report for the Rockefeller Foundation prepared by The Development Policy and Practice Department, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK
http://asiandrivers.open.ac.uk/documents/Rockefeller%20Report%20on%20Chinese%20diasporas%2010th%20Oct%20_3_.pdf

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