Why it’s easier for affluent women to find Mr. Right

Economic inequality, accelerating since the late 1980s, is shaping American lives in every dimension — and finding a partner is no exception.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the pill and the leap in women’s labor-force participation rewrote the rules of the mating game, giving women many more options in the choice of spouse and the timing of marriage. But a more recent trend is causing the odds of meeting Mr. Right to shift dramatically across class lines.

Women of greater and lesser means are getting pushed in different directions when it comes to getting hitched. Affluent women are finding a larger pool of potential mates, while women further down on the economic latter have fewer choices — and often they decide that it is not in their interest to marry at all.

Values — and romances — are shaped by economic circumstances. Until women can count on things like affordable education and childcare, along with decent, stable jobs and a strong social safety net, pragmatism will likely tell them whether, or if, marriage is worth it.

If we continue to tolerate growing inequality, the scope and meaning of these changes to marriage and relationships will be profound. The first stage is already underway because both men and women are inclined to pair off with someone whose education level, income and status are similar to their own – a tendency that has grown in the 21^st century.

Researchers call this “assortative mating.” Nature helpfully produces roughly the same number of women and men, but social conditions can wreak havoc on Mother Nature’s plans. Forces like population migration and mass incarceration can throw sex ratios off in real life mating pools. Even when the numbers are equal, income inequality can change the balance of men that women consider good catches. It can also influence their perception of what a good catch looks like.

American men and women are having different experiences of income inequality, according to data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The loss of stable, blue-collar jobs and the explosion of giant paychecks in the male-dominated financial sector have created a wider income gap among men. The difference between the highest and the lowest earners is greater among them than it is among women. Women are less likely to command the truly stratospheric salaries, and there are more women than men bunched in the middle of the income distribution scale.

At the top, high status women are faced with a glut of men looking for a comparable resume. In America, gone are the Mad Men days of the boss marrying the secretary. Now he’s more likely to be interested in a dual-hedge fund wedding — and he doesn’t care if she can cook. So if you’re a female hedgie looking for a spouse, you can literally afford to be picky.

At the bottom, in contrast, women find slim pickings because chronic unemployment, economic uncertainty and a host of associated ills have left the ranks of suitable partners so thinned that many lower-income women have given up on marriage altogether.

The problems of poor women are creeping into the middle-income range. More successful women with a high school and community college degrees find themselves in a frantic race to find a partner in a dwindling group of equivalent men.

Unable to find a husband, these women are often choosing to have baby first. As of 2000, middle-income American women have their first child two years before getting married on average. Both men and women in the middle range tend to cycle through jobs and relationships. They are more likely to marry than the poor — but are also more likely than those with fewer resources to live together, marry, divorce and then do it all over with somebody else.

Women have pulled ahead of men in education and income at the low and middle levels. But the mismatch story is not just a tale of female fortunes rising as men fall behind. As historian Stephanie Coontz has pointed out, women still don’t make as much as men on average, and they have a higher chance of being poor. Marriage mismatch is more about how inequality creates both positive and negative conditions for committed relationships depending on class.

If you’re a single woman looking for a desirable partner, the odds are in your favor if you happen to be in the top 5 percent of the income distribution. Men at the top are competing for you — and they know they need to commit. If you’re in the middle range, you have fewer good matches. If you’re at the bottom, well, good luck with that.

It wasn’t always so. In the 1980s, a high-school graduate was more likely to be married than a college graduate. Now the opposite is true. Those in the top third of the income distribution are increasingly embracing marriage, while those with fewer resources are turning away from the altar.

For women, the marriage calculus is pretty simple: you can only reap the full benefits of today’s optimal marriage when your partner is an equal who pitches in and treats you well. Marriage is increasingly organized to fit people with ample means — the more you earn, the better your chances at making love last.

Researchers find that in mating markets where men outnumber women, relationships tend to bemore stable and higher in quality. On the flip side, when there are fewer desirable men, those sought-after fellows tend to play the field instead of committing. Women in such skewed mating pools have babies out of wedlock because it makes sense — given limited resources — to invest in themselves and their children rather than trying to make a marriage work with a guy who might not only be broke, but prone to problems like alcoholism and violence.

The more culturally conservative men at lower income levels may resent the idea of a female breadwinner. Those without work aren’t too keen to do the dishes. In fact, laid-off men do evenless housework than before.

For a low-income single woman, especially one with a child, marrying may feel more like a burden than a relief. It’s not that they don’t want to marry; they can’t afford the risk.

But Ms. Moneybags knows that if she marries a man with similar means, she will have the resources to do things like hire nannies, pay for good schools and seek therapy if they hit a rough patch.

Those in the upper third of the income distribution, though not as secure as those at the very top, still have a good chance of getting together and staying together. But they may need to wait and see how careers and incomes pan out, and shore up their own resources in the meantime — women enjoy an income premium of more than $18,000 a year if they marry after 30. If college women choose casual hook-ups over boyfriends, they’re just being practical: Early marriage comes with penalties.

So what does all this mean for society? Surely, not everyone should be married. But stable long-term relationships provide many benefits to partners and children. There are social costs to single motherhood, and an excess of frustrated young men unable to find spouses and start families can only be a recipe for social unrest.

Conservatives talk as if a change of values is the answer, so they chastise lower-income women for their man-spurning ways and tell less affluent men to stop loafing and get a job. But the best way to ensure that women few marriage as a risk worth taking is to confront the high rate of inequality.

We can do this. Economist Thomas Piketty and researchers like June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, authors of Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family, have shown that this problem is neither beyond our understanding nor our control. We can insist on laws and policies that better meet our current challenges, like higher minimum wages, stronger unions, and changing the tax code so that it does not favor the wealthy.

But we have to read the writing on the wall: human pairings, if they are to be lasting and satisfying, or even form at all, require an adequate pool of people with stability and security.

That’s the way love goes.