Marriage squeeze

The marriage squeeze was originally coined to illustrate different patterns of marriage of men and women in the 1960s.^[1] In 2000, a new marriage squeeze was observed in the United States by African American women, who find it difficult to meet and marry desirable and eligible men.^[2] According to data from dating services, African American women are the least likely to receive response from men of any race and ethnicity in the USA.^[3][4] According to Newsweek, 43% of African American women between the ages of 30 and 34 have never been married.^[5] The United States isn't the only country that is affected by this phenomenon, other countries include China and India.^[6]

Marriage asymmetries

Racial patterns of marriage contribute to the marriage squeeze: In the United States African American men marry non-African Americans at a higher rate than do African American women.^[7] This leads to there being 2.38 times more Black men marrying White women than the reverse in the United States. In the United Kingdom that asymmetry still exists but is at 1.46.^[8]

Studies of marriage patterns in China have emphasized the male-biased sex ratio but have largely neglected age structure as a factor in China’s male marriage squeeze.^[9] The strong preference for sons and the lower social status of females in China have resulted in discrimination against girls. This is noticeable in demography from excess female child mortality and a higher than normal sex ratio at birth, which result in a large number of surplus males in the marriage market.^[6] In 2007, 36% of China's population was subject to a strict one-child policy, with an additional 53% being allowed to have a second child if the first child was a girl. This was put into action to lower the birth rates in China.

Causes

There have been a variety of suggestions to explain the patterns of marriage observed:

Incarceration

As a category, African American men suffer from higher rates of incarceration, unemployment, and poor health than do their white counterparts in the United States. These conditions often make their lives unstable, and disqualify them from raising a home effectively, in effect brand them as "unmarriageable".^[10] Rates of incarceration for marriage-age African American males are far higher than rates for females, further contributing to the male/female gap. As of 2002, 10.4% of all African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison.^[11] The African-American male-female disparity is highest between the ages of 25 – 29, when for every two African-American men, there are nearly three African-American women.^[12]

Desire to 'Marry up'

There is a desire among educated women of all races to marry partners within or above their social and economic class;^[13] when African American women restrict their marriage prospects to African American men, African American women risk either marrying below their socioeconomic class or not marrying at all as African American women consistently achieve better completion rates in higher education than African American men do.^[14]

Sexually dimorphic skin tones

Skin color is a sexually dimorphic trait. Universally, females have lighter skin tones than males.^[15] As such, a lighter skin tone is associated with feminity and a darker skin tone with masculinity. A consequence of this is that African males are perceived as more masculine and European females as more feminine.^[16] It has been demonstrated how this could be sufficient to produce the marriage patterns observed and hence the marriage squeeze.^[17]

References