Is Dating a Numbers Game?

I recently finished the book Date-onomics by Jon Birger. I saw the book going around social media and the idea of reducing dating down to numbers was, of course, intriguing to me.

The book reads like an extra-long and compelling research paper all boiling down to the thesis that gender ratios* can explain dating trends. Birger postulates that in environments where there are more college-educated** men than women in a given age range, more monogamous, long-term relationships tend to form. Men will compete for women and almost every person who wants to be in a relationship is in one. Conversely, in environments where there are more college-educated women than men in that age range, hookup culture and situationships run rampant. Men are less incentivized to commit because women are competing for a limited number of men.

He cites numerous studies completed at universities as well as provides a plethora of anecdotes reflecting the dating cultures of various cities across America. The book is filled with other interesting nuggets. For example, in environments where men outnumber women, men tend to have higher incomes. The theory is that when women are scarce, men are more likely to compete to be the best providers, perhaps deriving from our base biology. However, women’s income levels remain unchanged no matter the ratios.

If you want to know more, I do recommend giving it a read. It was quick and easy to understand despite all the hard numbers. But I’m interested in what this research means for individuals. Most people can’t move across the country purely based on gender ratios. There are jobs, personal preferences, family, cost, and numerous other factors to consider. But it does bring up an interesting decision point - if one of your major goals is focused on relationships, does it make sense to take gender ratios into account along with the other factors?

On the other hand, we all have friends who have found relationship success in supposedly ‘bad’ markets. I myself have only had long-term relationships since moving to Chicago, despite its gender ratio not being in my favor. As of 2019, there were 40% more college educated women ages 22-29 in Chicago than men. In LA, another notoriously bad dating market for women, more than half of my close friends are paired up in relationships, some upwards of 5 years.

With stories like these, it can be hard to believe the gender ratios are truly affecting the dating market. Then again, I also see a plethora of stories out there from women complaining that men don’t want to commit, and from men complaining that women are too picky. Those stories can’t all be baseless. At an individual level, it would still appear that everyone’s experience is different.

I firmly believe (based on no data whatsoever) that everyone can find a partner who matches their level of effort, pretty much anywhere. But that’s not enough if you’re looking for something more long-lasting, or maybe even if you’re looking to experiment. We’ve always thought of relationships as an individual problem, as we believe love and emotions vary from person to person. However, given how inconsistent success is when we look at it that way, maybe Birger’s idea to zoom out and look at how gender ratios affect dating behavior is not as outlandishly useless as it might seem. Maybe we’ve been playing the dating game wrong this whole time. You tell me.

*The book focuses overwhelmingly on heterosexual relationships and dating trends, although Birger does touch on how these ratios affect the LGBTQIA+ community briefly.

**I use college-educated as a qualifier here because Birger takes it into account in his research and notes that education is becoming the most common boundary in dating as opposed to other demographic identifiers. Most people want to date someone who is at a similar education level to them.