I continue to be astounded by the unrelenting interest in “singles maps” and singles ratios. A bluntly titled blog devoted to San Francisco’s lop-sided gender ratio cites this 2007 study (and an earlier 1991 one) which identified a singles’ tipping point of sorts. The study found that:
[A]s the sex ratio augmented in favor of women, at first, as you would expect, the women simply turned fussy and went for richer and more powerful men. But at a certain point a curious thing happened: the amount of socioeconomic status a guy needed to get girl increased way more than the math would predict. Specifically when the ratio was tilted in favor of women by 10%, low status men became not 10% less likely to get a girl but 200-300% less likely and high status men 30% less likely.
In other words, increase the number of males in a system too much and the number of females interested in pairing up GOES DOWN, due to some mysterious psychological trigger. Women won’t pick and choose, they won’t choose at all. They abandon the enterprise. Romance dies. Society crumbles. Imagine a bar with 100 girls and 100 guys. The bouncer admits 10 more guys and competitively speaking it’s as if, for the low status guys, 130 guys walked into the room (and for the high status guys, 30 guys). The bar might as well close for the night.
