☕ DaasYochid ☕

But if we could keep shifting it to younger and then to even younger girls instead of accepting that the older girls are continually left out

If I understand you correctly, you’ve hit upon an important point. “Shifting to younger and younger”, if you mean that the younger girls remain (temporarily) single, means, in effect, focusing attention on the older girls, and trying to get them married first. If I am not mistaken, this is precisely what NASI tries to do (and gets it over the head for it).

There’s another solution proposed by those who “get it”, that age gap is the cause of the lopsidedness (gender disparity). Some are trying to have boys get married younger ( I think NASI has encouraged this as well). This is indeed more of a long term solution, but will not help those girls who have already passed a certain age.

There’s no single correct answer. It depends on the level of sincerity of the parents.

That’s why so many Muslims go OTD.

Let’s say we added more chairs. Do you think the girls wouldn’t eventually notice and take a seat? (Of course the dynamics of shidduchim are different, but I’m illustrating a point).

What you are essentially agreeing to, if I understand you correctly, is that there can be no solution to the problem if the numbers aren’t addressed, but you maintain that fixing the numbers won’t help unless people’s priorities are changed

Here’s where I disagree. First of all, the vast majority of boys do marry within a relatively short time of starting to pursue shidduchim (maybe AZ has numbers), suggesting that pickiness is not the main issue. Secondly, I don’t think that the girls who don’t date often are completely undesirable to boys; it’s all relative. If there weren’t a “surplus” of girls, boys couldn’t afford to be as choosy.

You granted my assertion that hearing aids would just shift the lack of success in musical chairs to other players. There would still be 10% who couldn’t find seats, though. Think about it: if, as you assert, the numbers were always the same, that means that there must have always been a shidduch crisis of at least 10%.

Though age differences of up to about three years within a marriage have always been common, today we are seeing men marrying women 5, 6, or 7 years their junior with increasing frequency.

To answer what you feel is a gaping hole in AZ’s theory; perhaps you missed tho sentence from Dr. Halpert’s article.

So you agree chasidim have a “age gap” albeit smaller but no crises. According to your numbers at 4% increase pr year even if 19 year olds are marrying 18 year olds, that should leave 4% of chassidish girls unmarried.

No, because statistics show that there are actually more boys born than girls.

In your opinion/experience at which stage is the biggest problem.

None of the above. You said not to skip a step, but that’s what you’ve done. The first step is actually for young men and women to enter into shidduchim, and since they do so in uneven numbers, the rest of the process is skewed.

I was actually a little insulted for a second

Please be assured that I meant no insult or disrespect. Please be moichel me.

Ubiquitin, I’ll turn it around and ask you: If in the past, the numbers were the same (population growth and age gap), which means that there were also 112 girls for 100 boys, how could all of those girls possibly get married? Does even dating create more boys?

I don’t think they ever said all Lo Silbashes are created equal.

I also don’t think we should be telling major poskim what kind of mehalech they should have in psak. It’s one thing to talk in learning, but that’s above our pay grade.

If she doesn’t why would you?

It might still make her feel good.

If you have a good support system of values and love of yiddishkeit from home,

…then you don’t have a yetzer hora??!!??!!

Yit,

It’s not at all dochuk to say that some parts are not era subjective. That seems to be the opinion of the Rashb’a and Ramba’m l’gabay sa’ar beis hashechi, and although the R’ma didn’t pasken that way, and even if we go with R’ A.E. l’gabay mirrors, that doesn’t mean the yesod is wrong. Why broaden the machlokes to make it so yesodosdik? I think my diyuk in R’Moshe is a good one, that dying hair is b’etzem.

I’m a little short on time, but briefly:

Which characteristics of Lakewood girls do you think are silly to be important to a prospective husband? Are they wealthier and prettier than others?

You didn’t address my main point: the choosiness is a product of the disparity, so if somehow the disparity would be decreased, more girls would get dates, and, more importantly, get married. IOW, if boys didn’t have as many choices, they would broaden their criteria.

If there aren’t enough marriageable boys in the shidduch pool for the amount of girls, evening out the dating can’t get all of the girls married.

Of course the main (though not only) problem is the numbers.

Rabbiofberlin,

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=1379&pgnum=24

I should point out that it seems I misstated Dr. Halpert’s profession. Below the article I quoted, it says he works in finance. He did earn a Ph.D in mathematics, though, which still puts him at least at college level. 🙂

Ubiquitin, the obvious answer to your question would be that with more names to choose from, boys are using some common criteria to choose with whom to date (if we accept that Lakewood girls don’t have a problem, they seem to posses those criteria). The reason the boys have longer lists, and the ability to be selective is… you guessed it, age gap.

Besides, who cares who dates often? The point is to get married!

Sorry for thanking you. ;

It was in a few places, so it’s probably fine.

heh heh. just giving fair warning.

I don’t know if this will be allowed, but I’ll try posting the article and a link, and I’ll leave it up to the mods (as if I have a choice 🙂 ).

Ariel Halpert, Ph.D.

Posted Jan 23 2008

It is the best of times and the worst of times in the world of shidduch dating. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most single men in the various circles of Orthodox Jewry today have long lists of potential shidduchim and continuous dating opportunities. At the same time, many single women struggle with short lists and relatively infrequent dating. This imbalance represents a looming tragedy within the community as ever-increasing numbers of women are marrying later in life or not getting married at all. But what’s behind it?

The problem cannot be explained by other oft-cited causes of the shidduch crisis, such as the lack of suitable venues for singles to meet, the failure of friends and family to be sufficiently engaged in matchmaking, singles’ own unrealistic standards, etc., since none of these explain the imbalance in dating opportunities.

Rather, the problem stems from demographic trends of a growing community coupled with a widening age gap between husbands and wives. Though age differences of up to about three years within a marriage have always been common, today we are seeing men marrying women 5, 6, or 7 years their junior with increasing frequency.While an expanding Jewish population is a good thing, the widening marital age gap is having devastating consequences on the ratio of single men to single women within the shidduch pool. Ideally, the ratio should be 1:1, with equally as many single women as single men. Lower ratios, as demonstrated below, mean fewer men than women, so that in any matching of men to women, there will necessarily be women without a match.

The mathematical discipline of combinatorics uses the term “matching” to describe a situation in which elements of two distinct sets (think of single men and single women) may be paired in a one-to-one manner (think of marriage) in such a way that all pairs are appropriate or allowable (think of some shidduchim that are traditionally not appropriate from the start, e.g. a very tall girl with a very short boy). A perfect matching is one in which every girl is paired with a boy, and every boy with a girl, or in the language of mathematics, every vertex is incident to exactly one edge. Thus, the term “perfect matching” refers not to the merits of any individual match but to the pairing of all the elements of the two sets.

The Marriage Theorem of 1935 (attributable to mathematicians D. Konig and P. Hall) gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a perfect matching. Using the language of shidduchim, the condition can be stated as follows: For every group of single women (call such a group G) within those people in the “parsha” of shidduchim, the number of single men who would make an appropriate shidduch for at least one of the single women in G should be at least as large as the number of women in G. I will spare the reader the mathematical statement of this condition, but will posit that some reflection on the condition leads to the conclusion that the widening age gap between marriage partners is creating a situation in which “perfect matching” is not possible.

Data from the U.S. Census of 2000 provides supporting evidence that our community is growing in size. From the mid-1970’s to the early 1980’s, the number of children within the New York frum community born in a given year as compared with the number born in the previous year increased by just under 1% per year. So for example, if 10,000 children were born in 1975, then approximately 10,100 were born in 1976. Then, from the early to mid-1980s, this rate increased to nearly 1.5%, and by the mid-1980’s the rate was over 2%. These numbers may not sound like much, but when viewed within a demographic model, the results can be significant.

Using the above numbers along with a simple demographic model, and assuming that the age gap between husbands and their wives averages around 3 years (with a range of 1 to 5 years), we can estimate ratios of single men to single women who are 1 to 5 years younger than them.

For single women age 20, the modeled ratio is approximately 90%, which means that for every 100 single women at age 20, there are only about 90 single men who are 1 to 5 years older in the pool of potential marriage candidates. For single women age 25, the modeled ratio is only around 80%, and for single women age 30, the modeled ratio drops to around 60%.

In other words, the ratios decrease with increasing age, since as more men marry, there are proportionally fewer remaining single men to pair with the remaining single women. For example, with a ratio of 80%, there are 80 men for 100 women. If, say, 20 of the 80 men marry 20 of the 100 women, then 60 men and 80 women remain, reducing the ratio to 75%. In the extreme case, if all 80 men marry, then there remain 20 women with no possible match. Practically, this forces the age gap to widen further as the single women must consider even older single men. In general, wider age gaps decrease the ratio, which magnifies the problem.

Shadchanim, parents, and rabbis must recognize this demographic trend and prevent it from causing an ongoing tragedy in our community. This can be done by fostering an environment that encourages men to date and marry women closer to their own age. To be clear, on an individual level, each shidduch should continue to be pursued based on its own particular merits. But it is important to reverse the trend among shidduchim in general. In doing such, the balance between what may be good for the individual versus what is in the best interest of the community must be sought.

everyone who studied statistics on a collage level should be able to explain why this thing is misguided.

There was an article written by a mathematics professor with a Ph.D named Ariel Halpert (IIRC) which appeared in the Jewish Press (it’s since been removed from their website) explaining the shidduch crisis. You might be able to find it by Googling “ALL IN THE NUMBERS: A MATHEMATICAL EXPLANATION FOR THE ‘SHIDDUCH CRISIS'”.

Do you really believe that the ONLY factor is people not getting married is the age gap and if we “closed” then everyone who be married?

Of course not, otherwise there would be no older single males. Age gap merely explains why there are so many more older single females.

Apy, where does your assumption, that there’s a months long lag, come from? The girls may be waiting that long, but the boys certainly aren’t.

Also, I don’t get how the girls marrying when they’re younger would help.

Because Halachah isn’t dictated by American tax law?

What happened to dina d’malchusa dina?

😉

Edit: Yitzchokm’s post wasn’t up when I posted. Baruch shekivanti.

Google “List of countries by fertility rate” and “List of countries by population growth rate”. There are charts from CIA World Factbook (available on Wikipedia).

If you compare the fertility rate with the population growth rate, you’ll see the correlation. There’s actually a formula for it, which obviously won’t be precise in the real world because of factors such as migration rates.

If we assume that there’s an age gap in the shidduch system (that the boys are typically older than the girls) and that there’s no significant migration (more girls leaving the shidduch pool than boys; if anything, intuitively, it’s the other way), the age gap theory is right on the mark. The 3-4% annual growth rate arrived at by two independent studies (mentioned in the aforementioned Ami article) is right in line with the numbers you”ll see in the chart comparison.

Google “Jews and the Jewish Birthrate”.

just colorful bubbles demonstrating a growth rate several magnitudes higher than any imagined by “age gap” proponents

That’s not fair; they were very clear that it was to demonstrate the issue, not to give real numbers.

There are other fallacies in your post, but I don’t have time now to address them. Just one q: do you deny that our families are having between 5-7 children on average?