Get the latest tech news

Did Online Dating Increase US Income Inequality?


With online dating apps, "Americans have increasingly been marrying someone more like themselves," reports Bloomberg, citing new research that says this accounts for roughly half of the rise in household income inequality between 1980 and 2020: Using data from the Census Bureau's American Communit...

With online dating apps, "Americans have increasingly been marrying someone more like themselves," reports Bloomberg, citing new research that says this accounts for roughly half of the rise in household income inequality between 1980 and 2020: 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... Overall, the predominance of online apps to find a future partner has led to a 3-percentage-point increase in the Gini coefficient — a widely used measure of income inequality, the research shows.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Slashdot

Read more on:

Photo of income inequality

income inequality

Photo of dating increase

dating increase

Related news:

News photo

EU Piracy Rates Tick Back Up In Study That Shows Income Inequality And Less Legal Options To Blame