Hello99: and Binah was dead wrong. They focused on the micro and totally missed the Macro.
Tzippi: Here goes
step 1:
Population growth= more younger children than older children for both boys and girls
step 2:
more younger children than older children = more 19 year old people than 23 year old people (both female and male)
step 3:
If boys and girls begin the dating process at around the same age there is roughly the same amount of boys and girls entering the shidduch pool at any given year (hence the chassidm have no shidduch crisis for their girls)
step: 4
If boys and girls begin the dating process with an age gap (girls at 18.5, boys at 22.5) we have many more girls entering the shidduch pool than boys.
step: 5
if far more girls than boys are entering the pool every year then inevitably there are large number of girls with no one to marry. Every entering boys could marry a entering girls and we still have hundreds (aprox 200 per year) of girls with no one to marry.
step 6:
the next year the process repeats itself and the next year and the next year.
step 7:
The final result is hundreds and hundreds of girls tragically not getting married.
I hope this explains it clearly.
HEllO99: we can debate exact population growth and thus the exact number of unmatched girls, but the concept is pashut and obvious.
Truth be told there may be a significant difference between communities. In the yeshivish communities based on HS data collected so far (and anecdotal data, shadchanim info etc.) the boys who started dateing 5-10 years ago are almost all married.
In the less yeshivish communities there may be additional factors at work that MAY result in many many BOYS not being married as well. This is being studied at present but nothing conclusive has been reached. In other words to date no one has been able to get a handle on how many boys are out there in the non yeshivish community.
Any one who can help in this would be greatly appreciated.