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The NASI organization, which runs ads periodically in the Jewish newspapers, claims that there is one obvious reason for the Shidduch Crisis, known as the age gap theory, that since boys marry on average 3 or 4 years later than girls and the population is growing every year, for every boy in shidduchim there is more than 1 girl in shidduchim. The problem with this theory is quite simple. The human sex ratio is approximately 1:1, meaning that for every male born one female is born and vice versa. So if there are multitudes of girls that aren’t getting married now, and will never get married, there must be an equal amount of boys that will not get married. If so the shidduch crisis should inevitably invert and affect boys. It is statistically impossible to say that x amount of girls will never get married and every single boy will get married unless the sex ratio in the Jewish community is not 1:1, in which case that itself is the cause of the shidduch crisis.
Nope, your math is wrong. Sorry.
I don’t know if the ratio of our relatively small community is 1:1 (it sure isn’t in my house). Nor do I think that a crisis is born from one generation to the next. I doubt the growth is that much. But, as Popa said, your math is wrong. The quoted idea is as follows.
If there are five boys and five girls in generation 1, and the girls all marry boys from generation 0 while the boys marry five girls from generation 2, this would leave over another five in a situation where the population doubles in a generation. The ten boys in generation 2 will marry ten out 20 girls from generation 3. This will leave over 10 girls from gen3 in addition to the five from gen2.
It’s actually closer to 104 boys born to 100 girls.
1. Marriage rates always fall during periods of economic decline, in all societies. That’s because rational people are reluctant to start families if they don’t have parnassah.
2. Given the women almost never die in childbirth anymore, and the virtually all pregnancies result in viable babies (unlike the recent past when it was common for a woman to need many pregnancies to produce two offspring who lived to adulthood, and probably she would die in the process), delayed marriage is hardly a disaster.
3. If there is truely a “shidduch” crisis, we would be hearing about elementary schools closing due to lack of students, and unemployed teachers looking for alternative careers due to lack of work. This isn’t happening.
4. Everyone starts out in a shidduch crisis which lasts until they get married. Except for Adam ha-Rishon who had some unique issues, divine intervention isn’t needed to resolve the matter.
If there is truely a “shidduch” crisis, we would be hearing about elementary schools closing due to lack of students, and unemployed teachers looking for alternative careers due to lack of work. This isn’t happening.
You’re joking, right?
Akuperma, the idea of the crisis is not that there aren’t any marriages happening. The problem is that there are people left over who don’t get married although they want to.
I’m wondering, is a singles event a girls only event? If so what’s the idea of it?
It is very probable that the sex ratio of shidduch age singles in frum circles is at least 105:100 male to female and the whole NASI theory holds NO water.
The national average in the USA at birth is 105:100 male to female, it does fall to about 104.3:100 by age 24 but that due to boys dying due to gang violence, drug overdose and other vices that be’h are not so prevent in our circles. Additionally the ratio among Caucasians is 106:100 and among Asians 107/8:100. African Americans have 103:100 ration and drag down the national ratio.
So it is almost certain that the age gap theory is NOT the cause of the shidduch crisis.
HaLeiVi- The singles have to apply prior to the event, and they will only accept a limited number of girls. Many will be told to come to later events instead.
bas ploni, liploni. nobody ever gets skipped.
the trick is matching up bas ploni with ploni with all the nonesense prevelant in todays shidduchim. nasi has pointed to one of many human obstacles to bringing that bas kol to fruition.
Not maskim at all.
Because he’s smart.
The shidduch crisis is like global warming. You can’t deny that the issue exists, but you can argue about what caused it and what we should do about it for a hundred lifetimes. You can drink the koolaid passed around by Al Gore or Al Zore, but on some level you wonder where the subject matter experts are and why you’re listening to a preacher instead.
DaasYochid: If there was a shidduch crisis, the birthrate would be falling. That’s because among frum people, shidduchim correlate with getting married which correlates with having babies (frei Jews and goyim have different minhagim, but that’s irrelveant to our discussion here). Within a few years of such a crisis, the schools would have trouble finding students since the major determinant of how many children arrive at our schools is how many babies were born several years before.
Thus I am skeptical that there truely is a “shidduch” crisis, beyond the one that every single person has until they get engaged.
Akuperma, I don’t know why I’m bothering, since popa once tried explaining it to you, as did HaLeiVi now, but the shidduch crisis is caused by population expansion, so what you say makes no sense.
It reminds me of Yogi Berra saying, “Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, because it’s too crowded”.
Haga atzmicha: the shidduch crisis is generally defined as a problem for the girls. The vast majority of boys get married, but a slightly smaller percentage of eligible girls get married; it’s those girls left out for whom I and many others worry.
akuperma – I like that answer, especially the last line.
“Bas ploni l’plony”
So every ploni has a bas ploni. But does every bas ploni have a ploni?
“Bas ploni l’plony”
So every ploni has a bas ploni. But does every bas ploni have a ploni?
My theory is that more boys go otd than girls so either convince more girls to go off or maybe we need to change something in our boys education system to find out what we’ve been doing wrong.
It reminds me of Yogi Berra saying, “Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, because it’s too crowded”.
lol, that hits the point precisely.
Agree with interjection, but slightly differently, and I call it the ice cream theory and some call it the standard deviation theory. The theory is that girls are more likely to be looking for a “plain vanilla” BMG guy, than guys are likely to be a “plain vanilla” BMG guy. Guys might be a chocolate or strawberry BMG guy, or might be a rum raisin and certainly not in BMG, or even a chocolate caramel swirl with heath pieces mixed in and getting a Phd in electrical engineering.
Ice cream theory.
I once heard or saw the same described as the “standard deviation theory” of the shidduch crisis (probably saw on YWN, but if not, here it is). Boys are more likely to be further away from the mean boy, while girls are more likely to be closer to the mean boy (smaller standard deviation; taller curve). Girls are all looking for boys within a small deviation of themselves, but there are less of them.
Am I the only person who if fascinated by the discussion of the “shidduch crisis”? What fascinates me is that there can be so much discussion, so much text, and apparently so much passion, about something that seems devoid of facts and reason. No one can define what constitutes the “crisis,” no one has facts to support his or her quasi-mathematical explanation of the “crisis,” and no one in the discussion has the mathematical knowledge to account for the crisis (OK, I’m tired of using the quotation marks).
I think a discussion of the “Pennsy Pinkie crisis” would be more illuminating. I have not seen a Pennsy Pinkie in years (other than at the bottom of a bin in my garage). Has Pennsy stopped making Pinkies? Has a rabbi in Boro Park determined that Pennsy Pinkies are not tznius? Has a decline in motor skills among children led to the abandonment of play with a Pennsy Pinkie? A discussion of this topic would be as informed and informative as the discussion to date of the shidduch crisis.
“But does every bas ploni have a ploni?”
Unless you assume the bas kol skips over some bas plonis, I dont see why the answer to your questions isnt yes. If you do make that assumption, on what do you base it.
So basically popa is saying that many girls aren’t married because boys are mean? #hadtosayit
About the bas kol: is this bas kol by every child? Male and female? For some reason I always understood “bas ploni l’ploni” as bas ploni is meant to marry the male ploni who is about to be born. Meaning it is being said about a boy about to be born, not a girl. Now that I think of it, it can probably be read both ways.
how do you take someone quote and make it italic?
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