The Mainstream Media's Hypogamy Narrative: A Critical View

These days we are hearing a LOT about "hypogamy," in which women are faced with the choice of either "marrying down" from the standpoint of status and its determinants--such as income--or not marrying at all, as a result of the existing socioeconomic terrain and the associated mating market.

Does this narrative hold up? Not really. As is usual with the media we have it substantiates its claims rather poorly, with our commentators ceaselessly referring to the fact that the percentage of women getting college degrees has significantly outstripped the percentage of men doing the same, but not going much beyond that. Alas, this muddy thinking is instantly debunked by the figures regarding what people really make. Consider the figures presented at the DQYDJ web site. Presently showing the statistics for 2024 these indicate that in the U.S. in that year women in the 50th income percentile made $47,000, men in the 50th percentile $60,000--28 percent more than women do. As a result to have a male partner who makes less than she does a woman would have to be with a man in the 38th percentile--12 places down in the chart, a significant drop. And indeed, moving up the percentiles the gap between what women and men make tends to widen significantly. At the 60th percentile men make 36 percent more than women in the same position, at the 80th 38 percent more, the 90th 40 percent more, the 95th 45 percent more, and the 99th percentile 62 percent more. One may argue over the reasons for this, but what is fundamental for the purposes of this particular analysis is the empirical proof that the higher proportion of women who gain degrees is not facing college-educated women with a "dating pool" comprised of men making less than they do as a result of the educational gap because a significant proportion of men without degrees are making as much or more than a great many women with degrees. Quite the contrary, one may expect that marriages between college-educated women and non-college-educated men will tend to see women "marrying up" according to this metric, often by a significant margin. (Indeed, one can even argue that, looking at the less tangible aspects of contemporary social hierarchy, like the stupid snobberies people of conventional mind espouse regarding occupation, they will not necessarily even be marrying down. After all, do Americans generally feel that a nurse who went to college who marries a plumber or electrician who attended a trade school and did an apprenticeship is marrying someone "beneath her?")

Why then is the media so insistent on a claim that is so demonstrably flimsy? There is the fetish that the professional classes have for education, and especially the four-year college degree, as a great social and economic divider--which is significantly a matter of evading a great many hard facts of life, like all the factors that have nothing to do with education or merit in any sense of the term in making for individual "success," and the preference for emphasizing "opportunity" over outcome in economic life as they promulgate "aspiration" that has them thinking sending people to college will magically solve all of society's economic problems. Thus is it the case that they slight such matters as high underemployment among college graduates (a year after graduation 1 in 4 are not working in their fields, even those with the most in-demand degrees), the low returns on many degrees (like the arts and humanities), and the extent to which many degrees that confer high earning power initially do not do so for life (as with many in information technology)--as they overlook the earning power of those who manage to establish themselves in the skilled trades. Alongside this there is the gender politics of the narrative, specifically the media's attraction to Ra-Ra narratives of feminist triumph, male failure, and female grievance, the more in as the "crisis of masculinity" narrative specifically has been so popular as of late. The "college-educated women stuck with a dating pool of non-college-educated male losers" story is a winner on every count. Thus does the title of the MSN item at the top of my list of search results read "Hypogamy, the Increasingly Common Romantic Choice Among Brilliant Women" as it goes on to, yes, bring up the matters of education and especially college, and while if this particular piece is comparatively upbeat, there is an implicit the-bums-aren't-even-finishing-school and men-are-failing-women-yet-again current in the media coverage evident even in this item.

In saying that it is only fair to admit the ease of pointing out mainstream media failures in reporting on such matters, and that it is harder, as well as more useful, to provide a proper corrective by figuring out what is really happening in the world. Still, one doesn't have to seek very far for it. After all, if the "crisis of masculinity" may be a dubious conception, there are certainly plenty of crises quite relevant to this situation, like a crisis of higher education that has people speaking of a "bubble" in college degrees; a crisis of the cost of living after a half century of the price of essentials rising relative to incomes, affecting even people ordinarily thought relatively well-off; and with it a crisis of what has passed for "middle class" in our time (what I call the "quasi-middle class"). But of course that is exactly what the media does not care to report, as Justin Wolfers instead tells us "Don't worry, be happy" regarding rising prices, and Idrees Kahloon tells us "Americans can't believe how rich they are," while whatever ails us, whether a lack of affordable housing or anything else of the sort, Ezra Klein and his wife Annie Lowrey tell us, isn't the policies of the last half century--to use that term verboten in the mainstream media, neoliberalism--but our not having had enough neoliberalism, so here comes neoliberal Abundance to save the day!

Does all this mean there is nothing to the view that college-educated women are finding it harder to find economically attractive partners? Not necessarily. I suspect that the problem is that rather than "marrying down"--as the figures above show is probably not happening much--the unaffordability of the basics of a "middle class" life mean that finding a partner making enough money that in combination with their own income the two can have the financial foundation for a secure and comfortable life really has become more challenging. Because just so much money is now necessary. Think of it this way--where once the expectation was that one income would provide for a middle-class family, later two were the conventional requirement, and now that is becoming less and less adequate in a sign of the harder times. And so the marriage market is frustrating, just not in precisely the way that we were told it was. Of course, that story, less congenial to the prejudices of the mainstream media, is one they aren't telling.