Online dating caused a rise in U.S. income inequality, research paper shows
Since dating apps that allow people to look for a partner based on criteria including education, Americans have increasingly been marrying someone more like themselves
(Bloomberg) — Online dating may be partially to blame for an increase in income inequality in the US in recent decades, according to a research paper.
Since the emergence of dating apps that allow people to look for a partner based on criteria including education, Americans have increasingly been marrying someone more like themselves. That accounts for about half of the rise in income inequality among households between 1980 and 2020, researchers from the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and St. Louis and Haverford College found.
Using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from 2008 to 2021, when online dating quickly became prevalent, the economists found that women became slightly more selective when choosing partners based on age, while men became slightly more selective based on education.
But when the researchers compared that with data on married couples from 1960 and 1980, they found that people in the recent period increasingly went for partners with the same wage and education levels. And while many people married someone of the same ethnicity, people became less and less selective on race over time.
