There are many causes for the problem. One of many is the craziness of the shiduch process as I mentioned earlier, the stupid question syndrome for starters. Secondly, I would say is that “PEOPLE” have put learning boys up as a commodity and they are up for sale to the highest bidder. That means of course that the prospective girl must have all the qualities the in-laws are looking for: wealth, yichus, health, figure, beauty & brains in that order. Basically, they are looking for perfection or as close to it as they can get. And I am not talking about wealthy people with learning sons. I am simply speaking about the Learning Boy Commodity. The boy does not necessarily have to be perfect or meet any of the other criteria, just that he has to be a good learner.
Next of course we have the wealthy families who are looking for girls in their own category. Wealth looks for wealth. So what does that leave, the ordinary learning boy who is looking for support who is still looking for perfection, and the same criteria as above, but we, meaning the Yiddish community has an abundance of wonderful, amazing beautiful, intelligent young women who may not be a size 2, may not come from wealthy families, may not have the yichus sticker, may have allergies or may be a healthy size 6, may not have gotten her masters before she was out of her teens, and may not have been toilet trained at 2. Or even c”v has a brother in a number 2 yeshiva.
And there is the next category of smart young women who are actually looking for working boys, but are afraid to say that to the shadchun for fear of scaring them off, and the young men who are in yeshiva not really learning who would rather be in college or working but are afraid to do so because they are afraid they won’t get a shidduch.
This is what we have done to our children and this is why IMHO we have so many older singles.