High vs low mating success among never-married men

This graph displays the number of sex partners since age 18 for never-married men ages 30-39.  You can see that this is a very diverse group.  More than 10% have had zero partners ("40 year-old virgins"), and 41% have been with five or fewer.  By contrast, 35% report a dozen or more partners.

If we divide these men into a low (0-5) and high group (12+), the median for the low group is 2, and it's 25 for the high group. That's 12.5 times more women than the low group.

The high group --roughly one-third of never-married men -- looks like it is following the high mating effort strategy that was discussed in the last post, while the low group, with a median of two women, seems to be doing poorly at any strategy.  

Conservatives and single parenthood

The issue of out-of-wedlock births and conservatism came up in the comments of the last post. Here are the percentages of never-marrried men and women who have kids (GSS, years 2000-2010):


Percent never-married with kids--males

Extremely liberal 22.2
Liberal 12.2
Slightly liberal 18.9
Moderate 22.0
Slightly conservative 15.2
Conservative 21.9
Extremely conservative 37.5


Percent never-married with kids--females

Extremely liberal 34.3
Liberal 29.3
Slightly liberal 35.5
Moderate 45.6
Slightly conservative 37.4
Conservative 46.2
Extremely conservative 63.9


For single men, the numbers bounce around, but extreme conservatives are much more likely to have children. The conservative-fertility link is clearer for single women; over 60 percent of extreme conservatives have offspring. Part of the explanation for this is that conservatives are pro-natalist across the board: for all marital statuses, except perhaps for those who are separated, conservatives have larger families (data not shown).  

Liberals and family

A reader claimed in the comments of the last post that liberals live very traditional lifestyles. This is simply not true.

From the General Social Survey (years 2000-2010):


Percent Married

Extremely liberal 29.5
Liberal 36.5
Slightly liberal 43.0
Moderate 46.2
Slightly conservative 50.6
Conservative 58.1
Extremely conservative 57.1

And even though there are fewer liberals who have ever been married and who therefore can get divorced, their rate of divorce is higher:

Percent Divorced

Extremely liberal 17.6
Liberal 17.1
Slightly liberal 15.5
Moderate 14.8
Slightly conservative 14.2
Conservative 12.2
Extremely conservative 12.8


Liberals are also more likely to be unfaithful:


Percent ever cheated on spouse

Extremely liberal 26.1
Liberal 23.6
Slightly liberal 19.7
Moderate 18.2
Slightly conservative 17.9
Conservative 14.0
Extremely conservative 14.0


Percent who cohabited before marriage (1994--most recent year)

Extremely liberal 53.3
Liberal 43.3
Slightly liberal 35.4
Moderate 29.1
Slightly conservative 23.5
Conservative 23.1
Extremely conservative 5.9


Percent of married who have no children

Extremely liberal 23.1
Liberal 19.3
Slightly liberal 17.9
Moderate 13.2
Slightly conservative 12.4
Conservative 10.8
Extremely conservative 7.0

Fertility among educated, never-married white women

In the recent post on the fertility of never-married women, Audacious Epigone suggested I look at trends over time. I calculated the mean number of offspring for white women ages 40 to 59 who completed at least 16 years of education:


Mean number of offspring

Fifties .00
Sixties .00
Seventies .00
Eighties .14
Nineties .16
Aughts .14
This decade .18

From the 50s through the 70s, educated, never-married white women had no children. Since that time, perhaps one out of six has a single child. The trend suggests that if all educated white women never got married, the numbers of educated white Americans would dwindle rapidly.

This graph shows trends in marital status among educated white women:

Singlehood among educated white women has been increasing for several decades but is still short of twenty percent.

Marital status and fertility among blacks

As a follow-up to the recent post on marital status and fertility, I used 2000-2010 GSS data to calculate the mean number of offspring for black women ages 40-59 by marital status. I looked at the low- and high-educated separately.


Mean number of offspring

Women with less than four-year degree (sample size = 440)
Married 2.65
Separated/Divorced 2.55
Never-Married 2.34

Women with four-year degree or more (sample size = 111)
Married 2.00
Separated/Divorced 1.62
Never-Married .71*

*significantly lower than corresponding married or separated/divorced groups


In the earlier post, we saw that white never-married women have fewer kids than married or separated/divorced women whether they are more or less educated. For black women, this is true only for educated women. Among less educated blacks, never getting married is not associated with significantly fewer kids.

If marriage disappears completely among blacks, its population will not drop dramatically as we see with whites; by contrast, only fertility among educated blacks--a comparatively small group--will shrink. Let's look on the bright side: the disappearance of your smart people is better than the disappearance of your race. 

Agreeableness and marital status among men

According to the Game theory of male/female relations (correct me if I'm wrong), women tend to control whether a relationship is made or continued, and her decision depends on the guy's alpha-ness. She won't want to be in a relationship if the guy is too agreeable. If this is so, I would expect disagreeable men to be more likely than cooperative men to be married. The MIDUS study measured Big Five personality traits and asked about marital status. I dichotmized this variable into married (1) and not married (0).  I looked at the relationship between the agreeableness scale and being married, and included age in the model as a control:


Logistic regression coefficients (sample = 1,788)

Age .01*
Agreeableness -.04

*statistically significant


Older men are more likely to be married, but being an agreeable guy doesn't hurt one's chance of marriage at all.

I suspect that the Game perspective is flawed by oversimplifying. As we learn from evolutionary psychology, women tend to look at men from two different perspectives: as short-term and long-term partners. They tend to be more attracted to the Alpha for short-term relationships but focus more on the Beta for marriage. Betas are at a disadvantage if they just want to get laid, but their cooperativeness does not appear to keep them out of long-term relationships. (Nor are they more likely to lose a wife through separation and divorce: the mean agreeableness scores for married, separated, and divorced men do not differ.)

Religiosity and single-parent kids

With religion's prohibition against abortion, I wondered if religious people might be more likely to have children and not be married. Using GSS data, I looked at white households with minor-age children. Here is the breakdown of marital status by church attendance (sample size = 611):

Never attends
Married 54.1
Widowed 5.2
Separated 6.2
Divorced 17.7
Never Married 16.8

Attends weekly
Married 76.5
Widowed 4.9
Separated 2.0
Divorced 9.5
Never Married 7.1


Religious people with kids at home are more likely to be married, and are less likely to be separated, divorced, or never-married. All comparisons are significantly different except for the widowed category.

Extraversion and marital status: Here are the mean introversion scores for each marital status for Americans ages 30-49 (GSS data):


Mean introversion scores (N = 2,870)

Married 14.6
Widowed 14.3
Divorced 13.5*
Separated 13.7*
Never married 13.0*

* p < .05, two-tail test, compared with married people


All groups except for widowed are significantly more extraverted than married people. Makes sense. Marriage is for homebodies. Introversion might help explain the lower divorce rate of Asians. Here are effect sizes:


Effect size

Divorced .32
Separated .25
Never married .46


The differences between married/widowed people and the other categories are small to moderate.