Nice to see that even the critics agree that age gap is a factor, even if there is disagreement as to the degree that it plays. As such certainly efforts to alleviate it are helpfu, and should be taken.
If other factors are in play as well, then of course they should be addressed as well, in any form or fashion that can bring about the necessary helpful change. Of course such action should be taken upon advisement with leaders of our comminties.
Anyone one with sound explanations of other causes as well as implementable methods of bringing about the necessary change would do well to contacct the NASI Project as they would be thrilled to help in any way they can and will work as hard as they can to bring it about.
That being said, I am told that to date NASI has not seen any other factor that both explains on the MACRO level why the girls are having such difficulty in conjunction with a action plan for allevating it.
As a example, the most realistic concept pointed out, is the thought that more boys go OTD than girls. Some prelim studies where done to see if this is true or not but there weren’t conclusive. (for the purpose of this discussion OTD means that unfortanelty they stey OTD and don’t marry or don’t marry frum. if they come back at 20 or 25 or 30and “marry in” then for the purpose of shidduchim it isn’t relevant)
In addition, so far there doesn’t seem to be a effective method for alleviating this (i mean aside from the superhuman efforts that many people expend in this arena urelated to the shidduch issue).