In 2019, women hit a milestone in gender parity when they became the majority of the college-educated workforce.
While it may be easy to see how this achievement will impact the economy, earnings and job opportunities, it is probably a little bit harder to predict how it will shape, of all things, the dating market.
Jon Birger, a business journalist and former senior writer at Fortune, has authored two books on the connection between ratios and relationships. Birger acknowledges that not everyone has a desire to engage in a heterosexual relationship or get married. But of those who do, college-educated women may have a particularly hard time finding a partner, he notes.
Birger says this is because there are many fewer men enrolled in college — about 60% of college freshmen are now women. Men also drop out of college at higher rates, resulting in a dating market with a shortage of college-educated men. When this gender asymmetry is extended into broader society, Birger explains it can have significant consequences for people’s happiness, fertility rates and the economy.
And Andrew Cherlin, a professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University, talks with us about his — related — new research on changing marriage rates for college and noncollege-educated Americans.
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