Below is a chart about how couples meet in the US. It is always fascinating to see a chart like this. It is wild to think that one in three couples used to meet each other through friends. Now, it is less than 1 in 10.
Similarly, 1 in 5 couples used to meet at a bar. That’s dipped closer to 1 in 20. 1 in 4 met through family. That’s also closer to 1 in 20.
It made me wonder about the breadth and depth of our relationships.
It also made me wonder about the ripple effects of this. For example, below is an excerpt from a paper about the impact of assortative mating and income inequality.
“We find that the observed increase in assortativeness accounts for approximately half of the increase in household income inequality between 1980 and 2020,” a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis states. “The most important factors contributing to household income inequality through mate selection are selection on education (35%) and skill (30%), with selection on income (15%) and age (15%) trailing significantly, while selection by race (5%) plays a relatively inconsequential role.” (ref)
There are many such unknowns that I’m sure will be studied in time. The impacts, as always, with big societal changes, will be far reaching.
