The Odds of Getting Married After 40 for Women

In 1986 an article on Newsweek created ripples across American society when it reported that that a single, college-educated 40-year-old woman was more likely to die in a terrorist attack than ever walk down the aisle. While such a sweeping statement may seem outdated today, other realities like higher life expectancy of women vis-à-vis men and comparatively fewer number of single men in the forty-plus age group remain, all of which contribute to the notion that older women find it increasingly difficult to get a life partner. But what is the reality behind this perception and what are the odds of women getting married after forty?

TIP: This website has many single millionaire men looking for women to date and marry and they have over 3 million members. They have a 'verified millionaire' program wherein they verify income of the men and assign badges to the profiles. Signing up up is free.

Not many men to go around

US statistics on gender, age and marital status reveal that for increasing years after forty, the percentage of single women rises as compared to single men. Numbers mined from SIPP or Survey of Income and Program Participation, the leading source of marital information from the US Census Bureau¹, reveal that at ages forty through forty-nine there begins a shortfall of single men as compared to women with the result that there are ten men to every twelve women. At ages fifty though fifty-nine the shortfall increases so that there are ten men for every thirteen women and above sixty this goes up to as much as ten single men to every twenty-two women. The reason for this shortfall can be traced to various causes – one of the most important one being that there are more divorced or widowed women in the 40-plus age group than there are divorced or widowed men. And in fact the numbers keep getting skewed the higher the age group. At age 40 through 49, there are 19 percent of women divorced or widowed compared to 13 percent of men. At ages 50 through 59 this increases to 25 percent of women divorced or widowed while the similar percentage of men rises marginally to 19. And at ages 60 through 69, a whopping 32 percent of women are divorced or widowed while the corresponding percentage for men is just fourteen. The first implication of this trend is that there are simply fewer single men to go around as potential partners for women in their same age-group. With fewer men being divorced or widowed at each age group after forty as compared to women, the latter have more difficulty finding a single man from their own age group.

TIP: Match.com has many single men and women over 40 looking for love.

The second implication of the disparity in number of singles among men and women after forty is that men who come back on to the dating scene after divorce or bereavement are getting married and thus discarding their single status. Unfortunately for forty-plus single women, these men are not so much looking at their own age group for potential spouses, but at women far younger to them. While forty-plus women could theoretically take up younger male partners – and indeed many of them are doing so – their numbers are relatively less with the result that odds of getting married after 40 decrease for women.

Meet millionaire men at MillionaireMatch.com.

Another aspect of the phenomenon was explored in a 2010 study², carried out by Pew Research Center. An analysis of census data carried out by the institution found that college-educated wives in 2007 were less likely to have a husband who is college-educated and in the highest income bracket than they were in 1970, and married women are less likely to have a husband who works. This only goes to deepen the belief for forty-plus successful women, it is becoming harder to find a ‘suitable’ man which presumably means someone who is earning as much as them or higher and is college educated.

However not all news for women over forty is necessarily bad. A 2010 briefing paper from the Council on Contemporary Families³ has found positive trends about marriage, education and women. In the paper, the economists Betsey Stevenson and Adam Isen of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School analyzed marriage data from the US Census and the 2008 American Community Survey. They noted that historically, women with a college degree have been the “least likely” group of women to ever marry, but those numbers have been changing with each passing decade. Despite falling marriage rates across the age spectrum, in 2008, 86 percent of 40-year-old white female college graduates were married, compared to 88 percent of those with only a high school degree. It further found that college-educated women who were unmarried at age 40 were twice as likely to marry in the next 10 years as unmarried 40-year-olds with just a high school degree.
According to Dr. Stevenson, such trends are proof of changing notions of desirability in a partner since when couples now are less likely to marry for financial security or economic benefits and more likely to choose partners based on the “companion benefits” of marriage. This is especially true for women over forty who are most likely to be financially settled themselves and looking to marry for love and companionship.

And yet such hopeful trends vary widely according to other factors like level of education and ethnicity. So even though women after forty need not wring their hands at remaining an old maid for the rest of their lives, hard facts about shrinking pool of single men over forty cannot be wished away which in turn influence the odds of women getting married after forty.

Reference:

1. Laws of the Jungle, Gloria MacDonald and Thelma Beam, WAP Publishing, 2007
    
2. The New York Times - More Men Marrying Wealthier Women 
    
3. The New York Times - Marriage and Women Over 40