Reply To: 100% Solution to Shidduch Crisis–Goral

Mod42, Thanks for the hesber on the frum dating sites. As far as the math goes it is very tricky, and every time I think about it, I get dizzy. What we know is that biologically there are the same number of men and women in every age bracket until retirement years.

The tricky part is that AZ’s claim is that each younger bracket is slightly bigger than the next older bracket because frum families have lots of children and this causes population growth. So in some town, in the 20-25 bracket there may be 105 men and 105 women, while in the 25-30 bracket there may be 100 men and 100 women. Now because guys like younger girls, the 100 guys in the 25-30 bracket may swoop down and take 100 girls in the 20-25 bracket, leaving 5 of these younger girls with no men. These remaining girls then get older and have less and less chance of finding guys.

It is very confusing because sof kol sof there are the same numbers of each in each bracket at any time, so it basically boils down to a preference issue, not an actual physical shortage of people. In theory I guess it is no different than guys wanting a very rich girl, or a girl wanting a very successful guy. I don’t think you can really argue that it is anything more than a preference, such as preferring thin or good looking or tall or short or what have you. It is not a physical shortage.

Also, wouldn’t the guys from two brackets ahead (say 30-35) swoop down and take the 5 remaining 20-25 yr old girls and claim a major prize. (Like the old joke goes, my wife just turned 50, so I traded her in for two 25 yr olds.) So I literally get dizzy every time I try to evaluate the merits of AZ’s claim.

But my goral system would theoretically be immune from this since there must be the same numbers of singles. The only thing it could not do is to create guys in the 20-25 year old bracket because they may not be going out, and they would not enter. This may create an imbalance in the total number of available singles.

One thing to keep in mind is that by the non-Jews, it seems they are always having trouble getting women to attend singles events, so they always host ladies nite at bars and ballgames where they go for free to get them to show up. Non-jews also like younger women, so that is a bit of a kashya on AZ.

Another thing to find out would be how many of each gender show up at the usual frum single’s shabbatons and get-togethers. That ought to be representative of the number of available men, as well. I don’t think they are swamped with women only, but I could be wrong.