What, if anything, can be done about an entirely new social problem discussed in our story today: A shortage of men that well-educated women want to marry? It is easy to make fun of it, as in TV3's The Bachelor, where 21 women compete for the one eminently marriageable man. But it is no joke, probably, for the young professional women using dating agencies these days.
They are asking the agencies to find them men of similar education and there are too few. Among people in the 30-34 age bracket with a university degree or similar qualification, there are 155 women for every 100 men. That would be less of a problem if the women were more willing to "marry down". The overall ratio is 91 men to 100 women in the population aged 25-49.
But women are perhaps less inclined than men to marry someone not as well educated, which may add to the shortage of partners for intelligent women. Overall, though, far more couples are educational equals now that career horizons have been widened for two generations of women.
That is creating another problem for social equality. Researchers are seeing a widening gap between households with two tertiary-educated income earners and the rest.
The solution is not, as one dating agency suggests, for women to lower their expectations. They should, of course, keep an open mind when they meet someone but it would be idle to pretend that these things are of no account. The solution, as the researchers suggest, is to raise the numbers of men in higher education.
