iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — If you’re a single woman looking for a man but you think there are no good ones left, a new book on dating says it’s not just your imagination.
Author Jon Birger suggests the problem for women trying to find “Mr. Right” isn’t as much about interest as it numbers.
“It’s not their fault,” Birger told ABC News. “It’s the demographics.”
In his new book, Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game, Birger says he’s crunched the numbers and cracked the code to why young women, like Lindsay Dreyer, are finding “the one” can be so elusive.
“I have a great group of friends, I have an amazing job, I have everything in my life that I want,” Dreyer, senior editor at MIMI, said. “The only thing missing is a great guy.”
According to Birger’s statistics, her first problem is that she lives in a city like New York where there are 38 percent more female college graduates under the age of 25 than men who have a college degree. The so-called “educated man deficit” is even worse in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the gap is 49 percent, and in Miami it’s 86 percent.
“Men are more likely to play the field and delay marriage when women are an oversupply,” said Birger.
And while nationwide, among college grads in their 20s, Birger says there are four women for every three men, he writes that women will have more luck in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio. As a result of this imbalance, he says in the future we will see more of what he calls “mixed-collar marriages.”
“I think we all need to be more open-minded about who we are willing to date,” he explained.
“I would definitely be open to dating somebody who doesn’t come from the same educational background as me, but they would definitely have to be intellectually curious,” said Dreyer, 31.
Instead of the old, “It’s not you, it’s me” mantra, Birger says more women should understand, “It’s not you, it’s the ratio.”
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