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By now we all understand the problem: The age gap.
The Challange: The only way to really effect societal change is not by hoping idividuals change but by creating policy changes in our Mosdos (institutions).
With this premise, what practical policy change would you propose to reduce the age gap – and specifically which mosdos are you addressing.
Mop we dont!
Many don’t buy in to the “age gap theory” or at best view it as (a minor) part of the problem.
consider the following:
1) why can’t they provide real numbers it cant be that hard to ask a few schools to anonymously report how many students are in their graduating classes. We aren’t stupid we can handle numbers they claim a 4% growth rate where did this number come from? Ami magazine ran a several page “expose” on the “age gap” Not one real number was thrown out just colorful bubbles demonstrating a growth rate several magnitudes higher than any imagined by “age gap” proponents
2)Even Accepting their numbers the problem only holds true if ALL boys marry girls 3 years younger. If as little as 11% marry girls their age or older there is no “age gap” If less than that marry girls their age or older or girls a little younger than themselves the “age gap” would become an even more minor problem. Ask around this is certainly the case.
3) The shidduch process in our community works something like this: shadchan suggests girl, boy’s side looks into her, Boys side agrees, girls side looks in and agrees, they date, get engaged and married. Asking around the problem in the chain is that girls arent getting enough dates. (Generally, admitedly I dont have real data to back up this anecdotal evidence but hey neither do the :age gap” proponents).
Now going back to the numbers pushed by the “age gap” people assuming a 4% growth rate, that means 112.5 23 year olds are trying to marry 100 20 year old girls. The average guy dates 3 girls (some less some mouch more) that means 112.5 guys go on 337.5 dates. That is more than enough dates for all 100 girls. Yet the gilrs who arent getting married arent getting dates either. This cant be explained by the “age gap” at all
I googled “Shidduch crisis theory” for you, and found the following excellent resource, that sheds light on this difficult parsha:
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/bread-theory-of-the-shidduch-crisis
The best remedy, of course, is to not worry about it, not think about it, and forget about it entirely. That will destroy its power over us.
just colorful bubbles demonstrating a growth rate several magnitudes higher than any imagined by “age gap” proponents
That’s not fair; they were very clear that it was to demonstrate the issue, not to give real numbers.
There are other fallacies in your post, but I don’t have time now to address them. Just one q: do you deny that our families are having between 5-7 children on average?
mop, I agree serious discussion never involves debate, and rational people when pointed out the flaws in their opinion dont discuss either.
ubiquitin, in his/her paragraph 3, hit on exactly why there is no point to this serious discussion: absence of any statistical evidence that there is a “crisis.” Population growth in the frum community has been strong since 1945, and the rate of out-of-wedlock births in the frum community is extremely low. So where’s the shidduch crisis? I think some parents and some young adults have their own timetables for marriage, and if the shidduch choo-choo train does not arrive when these disparate timetables say they should, the makers of the timetables assume there is a “crisis.”
If this is a serious thread, future responders should have sound data, and sources (not like me).
Population growth in the frum community has been strong since 1945
Any statistics to back that up? (If true, it would explain why there’s a shidduch crisis.)
Google “Jews and the Jewish Birthrate”.
Google “List of countries by fertility rate” and “List of countries by population growth rate”. There are charts from CIA World Factbook (available on Wikipedia).
If you compare the fertility rate with the population growth rate, you’ll see the correlation. There’s actually a formula for it, which obviously won’t be precise in the real world because of factors such as migration rates.
If we assume that there’s an age gap in the shidduch system (that the boys are typically older than the girls) and that there’s no significant migration (more girls leaving the shidduch pool than boys; if anything, intuitively, it’s the other way), the age gap theory is right on the mark. The 3-4% annual growth rate arrived at by two independent studies (mentioned in the aforementioned Ami article) is right in line with the numbers you”ll see in the chart comparison.
why can’t they provide real numbers it cant be that hard to ask a few schools to anonymously report how many students are in their graduating classes. We aren’t stupid we can handle numbers they claim a 4% growth rate where did this number come from?
The article you’ll find when searching “Jews and Jewish Birthrate”, together with the charts I referred to, answer these questions.
Even Accepting their numbers the problem only holds true if ALL boys marry girls 3 years younger. If as little as 11% marry girls their age or older there is no “age gap”
Where do those numbers come from? They’re illogical to me.
112.5 23 year olds are trying to marry 100 20 year old girls.
Your numbers are backwards.
Even if we were to reverse the numbers (and approximate and call it 110 girls for every 100 boys), you’ve neglected one very important aspect. After, say, 80% of the boys get married, that leaves 20 boys left, and 30 girls. (I’m assuming that the same number of girls get married as boys, although I don’t have any statistics to back that up.) That’s a much higher percentage disparity than we started with.
“The shidduch process in our community works something like this: shadchan suggests girl, boy’s side looks into her, Boys side agrees, girls side looks in and agrees, they date, get engaged and married.”
If we could reduce the time from original shadchan suggestion, to final yes for an agreement for couple to first meet, from say 6 months to 3 months, we may be on to something as it relates to girls marrying younger.
the age gap people are ignorant in basic statistics and in denial that any other factors are contributing to the “crisis”
i agree let them show us some real data
I don’t have time to post about this but everyone who studied statistics on a collage level should be able to explain why this thing is misguided.
Apy, where does your assumption, that there’s a months long lag, come from? The girls may be waiting that long, but the boys certainly aren’t.
Also, I don’t get how the girls marrying when they’re younger would help.
Do you really believe that the ONLY factor is people not getting married is the age gap and if we “closed” then everyone who be married?
What about all the petty factors people pass up on shidduchim for?
Here a good starting point the UJA does a study of Jewish life with detailed data on Yeshivish/Chasish households. If you want the truth go this and look for growth rate. Then we can see if the 3-4% NASI throws around is true
You can google it and look at the data
Dy You are right my point 2 is not the best since it applies ot the girls I misspoke. If 11% of Girls marry their age or younger their is no age gap, but admittedly that is probably the case and is impractical. Although it does mitigate the “age gap” somewhat
as to the the fertility rate I dont want to google anything, those numbers are irrelevant since they have little bearing on frum society. The numbers that matter are frum high school graduates (These are not the actual numbers we care about but are the closest that can be accurately obtained)
At any rate my point #3 still stands. The problem is girl aren’t getting dates. This has nothing to do with the “age gap”
I don’t think the shidduch crisis has anything to do with numbers. Maybe that has some impact, but this isn’t China, where there are literally 120 boys for 100 girls. In a population of billions, that matters. The frum community isn’t big enough for that to matter.
If anything, lots of blame can be directed at the system itself for creating this problem. But this isn’t the thread for that issue
The frum community isn’t big enough for that to matter.
What difference does it matter? If anything, it’s MORE noticeable in a smaller group.
everyone who studied statistics on a collage level should be able to explain why this thing is misguided.
There was an article written by a mathematics professor with a Ph.D named Ariel Halpert (IIRC) which appeared in the Jewish Press (it’s since been removed from their website) explaining the shidduch crisis. You might be able to find it by Googling “ALL IN THE NUMBERS: A MATHEMATICAL EXPLANATION FOR THE ‘SHIDDUCH CRISIS'”.
Do you really believe that the ONLY factor is people not getting married is the age gap and if we “closed” then everyone who be married?
Of course not, otherwise there would be no older single males. Age gap merely explains why there are so many more older single females.
Ubiquitin,
those numbers are irrelevant since they have little bearing on frum society
I’ll ask again, do you disagree that “yeshivish” families average between 5-7 children? My point wasn’t to prove that; I think it’s fairly self evident. My point was to show how those numbers line up with a 3-4% annual growth. There were two separate studies of some sort (quoted in Ami) which came to the same conclusion with similar numbers.
At any rate my point #3 still stands. The problem is girl aren’t getting dates. This has nothing to do with the “age gap”
I don’t understand. Who are the boys going out with?
I don’t know if this will be allowed, but I’ll try posting the article and a link, and I’ll leave it up to the mods (as if I have a choice 🙂 ).
Ariel Halpert, Ph.D.
Posted Jan 23 2008
It is the best of times and the worst of times in the world of shidduch dating. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most single men in the various circles of Orthodox Jewry today have long lists of potential shidduchim and continuous dating opportunities. At the same time, many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating. This imbalance represents a looming tragedy within the community as ever-increasing numbers of women are marrying later in life or not getting married at all. But what’s behind it?
The problem cannot be explained by other oft-cited causes of the shidduch crisis, such as the lack of suitable venues for singles to meet, the failure of friends and family to be sufficiently engaged in matchmaking, singles’ own unrealistic standards, etc., since none of these explain the imbalance in dating opportunities.
Rather, the problem stems from demographic trends of a growing community coupled with a widening age gap between husbands and wives. Though age differences of up to about three years within a marriage have always been common, today we are seeing men marrying women 5, 6, or 7 years their junior with increasing frequency.While an expanding Jewish population is a good thing, the widening marital age gap is having devastating consequences on the ratio of single men to single women within the shidduch pool. Ideally, the ratio should be 1:1, with equally as many single women as single men. Lower ratios, as demonstrated below, mean fewer men than women, so that in any matching of men to women, there will necessarily be women without a match.
The mathematical discipline of combinatorics uses the term “matching” to describe a situation in which elements of two distinct sets (think of single men and single women) may be paired in a one-to-one manner (think of marriage) in such a way that all pairs are appropriate or allowable (think of some shidduchim that are traditionally not appropriate from the start, e.g. a very tall girl with a very short boy). A perfect matching is one in which every girl is paired with a boy, and every boy with a girl, or in the language of mathematics, every vertex is incident to exactly one edge. Thus, the term “perfect matching” refers not to the merits of any individual match but to the pairing of all the elements of the two sets.
The Marriage Theorem of 1935 (attributable to mathematicians D. Konig and P. Hall) gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a perfect matching. Using the language of shidduchim, the condition can be stated as follows: For every group of single women (call such a group G) within those people in the “parsha” of shidduchim, the number of single men who would make an appropriate shidduch for at least one of the single women in G should be at least as large as the number of women in G. I will spare the reader the mathematical statement of this condition, but will posit that some reflection on the condition leads to the conclusion that the widening age gap between marriage partners is creating a situation in which “perfect matching” is not possible.
Data from the U.S. Census of 2000 provides supporting evidence that our community is growing in size. From the mid-1970’s to the early 1980’s, the number of children within the New York frum community born in a given year as compared with the number born in the previous year increased by just under 1% per year. So for example, if 10,000 children were born in 1975, then approximately 10,100 were born in 1976. Then, from the early to mid-1980s, this rate increased to nearly 1.5%, and by the mid-1980’s the rate was over 2%. These numbers may not sound like much, but when viewed within a demographic model, the results can be significant.
Using the above numbers along with a simple demographic model, and assuming that the age gap between husbands and their wives averages around 3 years (with a range of 1 to 5 years), we can estimate ratios of single men to single women who are 1 to 5 years younger than them.
For single women age 20, the modeled ratio is approximately 90%, which means that for every 100 single women at age 20, there are only about 90 single men who are 1 to 5 years older in the pool of potential marriage candidates. For single women age 25, the modeled ratio is only around 80%, and for single women age 30, the modeled ratio drops to around 60%.
In other words, the ratios decrease with increasing age, since as more men marry, there are proportionally fewer remaining single men to pair with the remaining single women. For example, with a ratio of 80%, there are 80 men for 100 women. If, say, 20 of the 80 men marry 20 of the 100 women, then 60 men and 80 women remain, reducing the ratio to 75%. In the extreme case, if all 80 men marry, then there remain 20 women with no possible match. Practically, this forces the age gap to widen further as the single women must consider even older single men. In general, wider age gaps decrease the ratio, which magnifies the problem.
Shadchanim, parents, and rabbis must recognize this demographic trend and prevent it from causing an ongoing tragedy in our community. This can be done by fostering an environment that encourages men to date and marry women closer to their own age. To be clear, on an individual level, each shidduch should continue to be pursued based on its own particular merits. But it is important to reverse the trend among shidduchim in general. In doing such, the balance between what may be good for the individual versus what is in the best interest of the community must be sought.
Thank you.
don’t thank me yet–95 will probably take it down due to copyright violation or something
DY
(Thanks for the info though I was looking for actual hard numbers this is interseting nontheless)
However his conclusion is wrong
Here is the money quote:
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that most single men in the various circles of Orthodox Jewry today have long lists of potential shidduchim and continuous dating opportunities. At the same time, many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating”
This can not possibly be explained by the “age gap” If the boys are dating frequently the girls should be getting dates in spite of the “age gap” True wehn the music stops some girls may be left without a chair but they should be getting dates if the boys have long lists.
Yet he writes, and Ive mentioned in point 3 in my first comment on this thread “many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating”
If 100 boys are going out with 112 girls and the average guy goes out with more than one girl all the girls should be getting dates.
If the trouble is getting the girls dates something else is the problem.
Sorry for thanking you. ;
It was in a few places, so it’s probably fine.
heh heh. just giving fair warning.
I don’t see any documentation on how big the spread between boys and girls is. So till then it is SPECULATION!
The data about growth seems to be all Orthodox Jews. It is plausible the MO started having more children and Yeshivish stayed the same.
Also all this is a THEORY no one have proven causation – only hypothetical correctional. I see no reason to turn over the world for a creative theory.
Also the claim has been put forth in the Yated that girls in Lakewood, NJ have no shidduch crisis. So for whatever reason that is – there are ways to erase the effect of the age gap.
It might be easier to reproduce the factors that exist in Lakewood than to force dating policy on the world.
That is kind of like free market vs socialism.
Ubiquitin, if the girls aren’t getting dates, who are the boys going out with?
DY out of the 112 girls the 300 dates that the 100 guys can provide (assuming an average of 3 which admittedly I got from a very un-scientific poll) Should more than cover all girls. The issue shouldnt be girls struggling with “short lists and relatively infrequent dating” All girls should get an equal number of dates though a few dont get married.
The calculations made in his article assume a “situation in which elements of two distinct sets (think of single men and single women) may be paired in a one-to-one manner (think of marriage)” This holds true for marriage but not dating. By far most Guys date more than one girl And some a lot more.
Therfore the age gap can not be used to explain why girls aren’t getting dates.
what is happening is within the set of 112 girls some girls are getting a lot more dates (with the 100 guys) than others. Some hardly get any. This has absolutely nothing to do with the “Age gap” Needless to say if girls have trouble getting dates they will have a harder time getting married. But again this is not because of the “age gap”
In short, the boys are going out with a subset of the available girls. Not because there aren’t enough boys.
Ubiquitin, the obvious answer to your question would be that with more names to choose from, boys are using some common criteria to choose with whom to date (if we accept that Lakewood girls don’t have a problem, they seem to posses those criteria). The reason the boys have longer lists, and the ability to be selective is… you guessed it, age gap.
Besides, who cares who dates often? The point is to get married!
Unfortunately, at this point the shidduch crisis is too politicized and there can be no more productive conversations about it. Too many egos are involved. I imagine all the singles are eternally grateful.
The voice of reason,
See above post. Your points are addressed.
I should point out that it seems I misstated Dr. Halpert’s profession. Below the article I quoted, it says he works in finance. He did earn a Ph.D in mathematics, though, which still puts him at least at college level. 🙂
Squeak, I think we’re having a productive conversation. What’s so political about it?
DY
“Besides, who cares who dates often? The point is to get married!”
agreed! Though as you may know the biggest segula to get married is to date.
Anyway you finnaly hit the nail on the head
” boys are using some common criteria to choose with whom to date (if we accept that Lakewood girls don’t have a problem, they seem to posses those criteria)”
Bingo!
And many of those criteria are silly. The solution to the crises is to get people to look past these silly criteria or to give women an equal footing in choosing whom to marry.
The “age gap” is a minor part of the problem and doesnt explain the dating disparity at all. Focusing on it ignores the real issue
DY,
Furthermore keep in mind the key to all this is determining what has changed that there is a crises now
Is the “age gap” new?
Or is the increase in, as you put it, “common criteria” new?
I’m a little short on time, but briefly:
Which characteristics of Lakewood girls do you think are silly to be important to a prospective husband? Are they wealthier and prettier than others?
You didn’t address my main point: the choosiness is a product of the disparity, so if somehow the disparity would be decreased, more girls would get dates, and, more importantly, get married. IOW, if boys didn’t have as many choices, they would broaden their criteria.
If there aren’t enough marriageable boys in the shidduch pool for the amount of girls, evening out the dating can’t get all of the girls married.
Of course the main (though not only) problem is the numbers.
I am not an expert at demographics (and am not intending to discount it at all) but to me it seems to be also a networking issue as guys have a built in network called the yeshiva system which is much more easily used to their advantage. As girls grow older their seminary ties tend to fall away and the amount of (helpful) contacts are much more limited. They tend to be much more dependant on the shadchanim. Out of town girls are hit even harder by this problem for obvious reasons. While this doesn’t completely explain the disparity it does explain why many girls aren’t getting dates.
DY
The probelem as expressed by the good Dr. you quoted is “many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating.”
If 100 boys are DATING 112 girls all girls should get equal number of dates (though not marriages) The entire “age gap” theory falls apart once you realize this this it is based on a 1:1 match which isnt the case with dating, since the average guy dates more than one girl
what is happening is of those 112 girls “many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating.” There are more than enough dates for them! yet they arent getting dates for whatever reason.
Closing the “age gap” will not change the reasons they arent getting dates. If 100 boys are going out with 100 girls the same group that has had trouble getting dates in the 100:112 scenario in spite of the fact that there were plenty of DATES available will still have trouble getting dates if other societal norms remain in place.
Keep in mind these societal norms are more recent than the “age gap” thus better explain why the “shidduch crises” is a recent phenomena.
DY
If the issue wasnt a lack of dates ie girls were getting a roughly equal number of dates, yet some just werent getting married. Then, MAYBE the “age gap” could explain the problem.
Similarly if Guys dated only one girl.
U: “many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating.” is a result of the gap, not the cause, even according to the good Dr.
We have been through this, I know he says that but it doesn’t make sense. note how he switches what he is addressing in his piece he first identifies the problem as “infrequent dating” His mathematical model addresses a “situation in which elements of two distinct sets (think of single men and single women) may be paired in a one-to-one manner (think of marriage)” dating is not done 1:1
It cant be a result of the gap. I will walk you through it very slowly, please let me know which point confuses you:
1) dating is a prerequisite to marriage
2) 100 23 year old boys are trying to date 112 20 year old girls
3) On average a boy dates 3 girls
4) That means there are 300 (3x 100) dates available to the 112 girls.
5) Assuming things are equal Each girl should receive a rougly equal number of dates.
6) “many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating”
7) Without daing these girls who aren’t being chosen for dates (despite the overabundance of dates available) will not get married (see point 1)
8) This has little to do with the “age gap”. Since even with the “age gap” There are more than enough dates to go around.
Which point confuses you/ do you disagree with?
9) This would even happen were there an even number of boys and girls.
DY
That is point 8. No problem I’d be happy to elaborate.
first of If point 4 didnt confuse you you now realize that, if out of 112 girls who have 300 dates available There is still a problem of “infrequent dating.” It is hard to imaging how an even number of girls and boys ie 300 dates available to only 100 girls would significantly later that.
The “age gap” is built on the premise that marriage occurs 1:1. However dating doesnt . I have dated 18 girls, and I know of others who have dated far more (I am sure you do to. There still are girls who arent getting dates! This can not be explained by any “age gap” There are more than enough dates avalable to all gilrs.
In other words while the “age gap” may explain why girls aren’t getting married, it does not at all explain why they aren’t getting dates
Secondly the “age gap” isnt new, yet the “shiduch crises” is. why do you refuse to examine other new societel norms in dating as the potential cause of the “shiduch crises”
One question i thought I’d ask.
Do you agree/disagree with the following statement/observation.
The number of orthodox non chassidic men who are still single after 5/10 years of dating is significantly fewer than the number of orthodox non chassidic women who are single after 5/10 years of dating.
Or perhaps I should restate it as follows:
The number of orthodox non chassidic men between the ages of 30-38 who are unmarried is significantly fewer than the number of orthodox non chassidic women between the ages of 27- 35 who are unmarried.
If the answer to this is yes, then we can begin to discuss how it is possible and how it happened and how to alleviate it. If the answer if no, then the discussion doesn’t begin.
so where do you stand on that question:
Yes
No
Unsure
In deference to the OP’s request, I won’t use this forum to discuss what or why I think the answer to the question is. I’ll just point out that any discussion on the topic begins with what one thinks the answer to the above question is.
As for specific data, anyone is welcome to contact the NASI project and they will be happy to provide all the data/information they have access to.
The ONLY way to reduce the age gap, and thus alleviate the crisis, is to have guys getting married younger closer to age 20.
ubiquitin:
you have chosen to define the crisis in terms of frequency by which girls get dates.
suppose:
1. you have 10 guys and 100 girls.
2. each guy dates on average 10 girls before he gets married.
Will each girl get a date- probably
Is there a shidduch crisis in this theoretical situation????
The definition of the crisis is NOT the difficulty girls have in getting dates, nor in the relative frequency of their dates. That may perhaps be a by product of the crisis.
The DEFINITION of the crisis is that after 5/10 years of dating the numbers of unmarried men pale in comparison to the numbers of unmarried women.
THAT is what is referred to when people discuss the shidduch crisis.
(I have not even offered a suggestion how that comes to be, i have simply accepted a specific observation and used that observation as the definition of the crisis. (yes i know that in a earlier post i said i wouldn’t do this- but i did)
Anyone if free to
a) deny the observation- thought that might the equivalent of denying the reality similar to ba harug biraglav.
b) offer explanation how that reality came and continues to come about
c) offer suggestions how to alleviate that reality, which was the intention of the OP.
(side note: if one accepts that observation/reality, even if they disagree with how/or why that reality comes about, closing the age gap will help to alleviate and adjust that reality.)
AZ a couple of points:
1) I didnt choose to define the crises that way that is often how it has been presented, see the above lengthy article DY quoted and catch the author doing a bait and switch.
2) I outlined above shiduchim is a process, a leangthy one at that It goes something lke this “shadchan suggests girl, boy’s side looks into her, Boys side agrees, girls side looks in and agrees, they date, get engaged and married” To analyze the “crises” We have to see where in that line is there an oddity, where are people being left behind? Are the boys not hearing of them? That does not seem to be the case. Most boys I know/knew have long lists of available girls. On to the next step are many girls not being chosen to date? By asking around yes this seems to be where the disparity lies. Some girls have plenty dates while others, to quote the above cited piece, have “relatively infrequent dating” This is the casue of the “shidduch crises” and it cant be explained by “age gap”
MArrying girls several years younger is not new, increse in population is not new either. The “shiduch crises” is new. Therefore some other new societal changes that did not exist 15/20 years ago have caused this situation.
Ubiquitin, I’ll turn it around and ask you: If in the past, the numbers were the same (population growth and age gap), which means that there were also 112 girls for 100 boys, how could all of those girls possibly get married? Does even dating create more boys?
I know girls whom after dating thirty guys still haven’t gotten married and I know guys who can’t seem to get dates. The vast, vast majority of girls have had their chance to get married, but unfortunately many haven’t found The One yet.
I don’t believe in the age crisis. Men have always married younger women and no one complained until recently.
There may be more older girls than guys but I don’t believe it’s a result of an age gap. I believe we would find the answer if we could create more tolerance for Jews unlike ourselves. (I’m not saying to compromise on Halacha, only hashkafa.)
Although learning full time is ideal, maybe the schools need to stop pushing it on the girls who can’t handle it.
There are many who say that there is a reverse crisis by the chassidim of there being too many guys. I don’t know if its true but being that its mentioned time and again, maybe there’s where our problem is. Perhaps we need to revamp our chinuch in order that we all become more accepting of other Jews.
I’m sure we will find wonderful boys deserving of our girls if we become less exclusive.
I believe we would find the answer if we could create more tolerance for Jews unlike ourselves. (I’m not saying to compromise on Halacha, only hashkafa.)
interjection: Can you please clarify what you mean by this?
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