Lilmod, I have a very different view of the shidduch situation in EY than you do, apparently. I do not agree that girls in the US get married younger- afterall, at 18-19 they go to EY for seminary and don’t start dating until sometime the year they come back. In EY, even though there are 3 more years of seminary/maslulim, plenty of girls get married during those years, and some even in 12th grade. At least that is how it used to be. If you see girls getting married later, it is exactly what I am talking about- it is not by choice, but because it is harder to get a shidduch these days.
Ths shidduch “crisis” in American and in Israel are due to different reasons.
The economy is better in Israel. True. That means the upper class has more money and the shekel is strong. Kollel families and people working at low paying jobs (such as teachers, rebbes, etc) have missed out on that boom. Have you noticed how basics like food and housing have skyrocketed recently? Did you hear about the cottage cheese protests? And child benefits and other government programs have been cut? It has gotten very expensive to live in E”Y. Many people, like Assurnet cannot afford to buy apartments unless somehow their parents do it for them.
Yes, it is more acceptable for the boy’s side to offer part of the cost of the apt, and for the couple to take on some of the cost as well. But assuming that each family has both boys and girls to marry off, the fact that they may pay less for their daughters’ apt is off-set by the fact that they are paying more for their sons’ apts. Chareidim who go out to work are not doing it at the age they are dating, so that does not affect apt buying. When they do go out to work, it is so that they can feed their large families. They are not getting the high paying hi-tech jobs, and there is very little leftover for buying apartments. If they have left the yeshiva world to work at a young age, which also means they have to go to the army, then that puts them in a very different category for dating and they are not asking for apartments.
And again, there is a very strong hierarchy in the shidduch scene among boys. The top yeshivas insist that their bochurim are worth “sidur malen”- meaning the price of a full apartment. The best bochurim will ask for an apt in the merkaz or yeushalayim. Second tier boys get full cost of apt in periphery. Third tier, get 70% of apt, etc. It is quite sick how the boys are marketed in this way, but this is how it is. You can protest and say you do not agree to such a system, but then you or your daughter will not get shidduchim. Now say you are a “great” girl, and want a really good boy from a good yeshiva with a strong potential in learning. but you can’t afford the full cost of an apt. that means you can only date the third tier boys, who might not be appropriate. so the years pass. Maybe by then the boy who is already older will settle for less of an apt, or the girl will settle for a boy she would not have considered at a younger age. So what it boils down to, is that money becomes the most important factor in determining the shidduch, rather than compatibility, shared goals, etc.
Perhaps at some point the whole system will crash and priorities will be re-evaluated (hopefully by the time my kids reach shidduchim), but in the mean time this is out it is.