There are a few issues with the study:
1) It doesn’t factor in the fact that single girls oftentimes marry divorced men, preventing divorced girls from finding a shidduch;
2) It doesn’t factor in that fact that FFB girls often marry Baalei Teshuva, preventing Baalos Teshuva from finding a shidduch (the study didn’t study Baalei Teshuva);
3) When girls are single for many years surrounded by secular people – e.g., working in a law firm for twenty years – they no longer categorize themselves as “Yeshivish,” considering themselves either Modern Orthodox. So if data were to show that “100% of Yeshivish girls get married,” it’s a tautology. Girls who aren’t married at 40 no longer consider themselves “Yeshivish” per se (e.g., they wouldn’t want to marry a learning boy).
4) There really are two Yeshivish communities. There are Touro College families and there are BMG (freezer) families. Touro College types use the internet; BMG types use it less so, and their computers are filtered. So when you do an INTERNET survey which largely excludes the BMG-freezer types, you are omitting the community that one would assume suffers the most from the shidduch imbalance.
5) As the Chofetz Chaim says, (Nidcei Yisrael, perek 25), people who are single are prone to die young. So if data shows “95% of Yeshivish people are married by 40” we should consider the fact that some single people are no longer with us, caused by the fact that they couldn’t find a shidduch.
6) Even taking the study’s conclusions, the study points to a serious issue: the ultimate age gap is around two years, despite the fact that in the Yeshivish community there’s a two year gap. This is good news, but also is bad news. Good news, because there’s less of an imbalance. Bad news, because it highlights the fact that girls have to wait to EXTRA years, in addition to the regular waiting that boys go through. These two additional years apply to everyone, on average, although of course some way 6 EXTRA years, while others way zero EXTRA years. This additional waiting is devastating to girls, not knowing whether they will ever get married.
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