Technically, single Black women and women considered to be highly educated are the only ones who can complain about the marriageable men shortage, a Brookings Institute Study suggests.
Traditionally, marriageability ratios have compared numbers of employed men in a particular age bracket to all women within that same age range. However, this study reasons that modern times have proven that all women are not equally marriageable, and that a woman’s ability to contribute to family finances also plays a role in whether or not she’s considered to be marriageable. Additionally, the study suggests that women having children from previous relationships also makes men “understandably reluctant” to marry them. With these factors in mind, Brookings Senior Fellow Isabel Sawhill and former Senior Research Assistant Joanna Venator, examined gender ratios that take the employment of both men and women in consideration. They also examined ratios that take children from previous relationship into account. After making those adjustments, the duo found no shortage of marriageable men—except for when it came to Black women and college-educated women.
“The lack of marriageable men in the black community is affected by the very high rates of incarceration and early death among black men compared to white men,” the study explains. “Among black male high school dropouts, 60 percent will be dead or incarcerated before the age of 35.”
Ironically, college-educated women—the group with the highest marriage rate—are also facing a shortage of men. The study explains:
“Using the conventional measure of marriageability — the ratio of employed men to all women — there are only 85 men for every 100 women among 25 to 35-year-old college-educated adults. In contrast, for every employed, childless woman with a high school diploma, there are over 2.5 comparable men. These disparities are the result of women’s rising education levels. Women are now more educated than men, meaning that they will necessarily face a shortage of marriage partners with the same level of education. What we are likely to see in the future, then, is either women marrying ‘down’ educationally, or not
marrying at all.”
The study was conducted with the assumption that most singles are seeking to marry someone from similar socioeconomic, educational and racial backgrounds. Of course, this is not the first study to deliver doom and gloom statistics relating to Black women. Last April, a study suggested that college-educated Black women are having a hard time getting because many of us are marrying down.
To improve marriage rates, Sawhill and Venator suggest policy interventions that will improve economic opportunities for men without college degrees and reducing the rate of unwed pregnancies.
Read their full study here.
