Online dating apps haven’t made it any easier to find a life partner

But unfortunately, according to a working paper for the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, the rise of dating apps has not made it any easier to find a soulmate.

That came as a bit of a surprise to the research team of economists Anton Cheremukhin, Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria and Antonella Tutino. They had expected to find that online dating would be a turbo boost to ‘assortative mating’—the decades-long trend of similar people coupling up.

That’s not what they found. But they did find a major shift in men’s marriage preferences, with implications for income inequality.

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When the team looked at data from the American Community Survey and the US Census going back to the 1960s, they found that although people’s romantic preferences have shifted dramatically, online dating has had almost no impact—despite becoming a common way to meet one’s partner. 

“You may have access to a lot more people," Restrepo-Echavarria says, “But you’re going to have to sort through all of those people in a way that you can’t really process." In other words, the internet connects us with so many potential mates that our puny human brains can’t handle it. 

Or, as the paper says, “people’s capacity to process and evaluate information hasn’t improved despite technological advancements." If dating is looking for a needle in a haystack, then online dating is like sifting through a much bigger haystack.

Sure, there may be more needles in it. But there’s also definitely more hay. I will never forget the online date who showed up, took one dispirited look at me, and suggested we cancel.

The researchers did find a big shift in dating preferences, but it preceded the rise of Match, Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, OKCupid, SilverSingles and all the rest. 

And that shift is this: Over the last 60 years, men have become more likely to prefer equally educated women who have earning potential similar to their own. 

That preference for a similarly-educated, similarly-earning spouse is so strong that it accounts for about half of the increase in income inequality between 1980 and 2020, say the researchers. 

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In other words, it’s not only MBAs marrying MBAs. It’s teachers pairing off with teachers and cashiers saying “I do" to cashiers. The goal of marriage today seems to be more about parity than about “marrying up."

That’s a remarkable shift. Although women have always worked, the earlier expectation was that women would quit their jobs after marriage. In fact, a married woman who didn’t quit could be fired until legislation in the 1960s made that illegal. 

Even after more women started to attend college, the assumption was that they were going for their ‘Mrs’ degree, not as preparation for a career. Back in those days, men largely preferred less-educated, lower-earning women—homemakers. Women preferred higher-educated, higher-earning men—breadwinners.

But now, women have surged into the workforce. And men have become more interested in a marriage of equals.

The researchers hypothesized that the rise of online dating would accelerate this trend: a few taps or keystrokes and, boom, a list of similarly educated, similarly employed potential mates. But that’s not what they found. Think bigger haystack.

I asked whether the real-world places people often meet were already bringing similar people together so often that online dating couldn’t improve on it. 

After all, social scientists have fretted extensively for the past couple of decades that we’re all sorting ourselves into like-minded enclaves. But the researchers had explored and ultimately rejected this so-called “spatial" explanation. It didn’t fit their data.

And to be clear, people aren’t looking for carbon-copies of themselves in every dimension. Inter-racial marriage has become more common, as have interfaith marriages. 

Despite increasing in inequality, there is an upside to assortative mating, Restrepo-Echavarria says. A marriage market where everyone is chasing the same exact person (finance, trust fund, 6’5"?) is intensely competitive and leaves a lot of people on the sidelines. 

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There are a lot more potential pairings in a marriage market where podcasters seek other podcasters, lawyers seek other lawyers, and rodeo clowns other rodeo clowns.

“If you prefer someone that is like yourself, it’s easier to find that someone rather than if we all try to find the same person," she explains.

For the so-called dismal science, that’s pretty darn romantic. ©bloomberg