China has one of the highest male-female sex ratios in the world; as I discuss in Chapter 17 of The Armchair Economist, that means women can afford to be picky. Here (as reported in the May 14 issue of The New Yorker) are the requirements listed by a female graduate student seeking a mate on the Chinese equivalent of match.com:
- Never married
- Masters degree or more
- Not from Wuhan
- No rural I.D. card
- No only children
- No smokers
- No alcoholics
- No gamblers
- Taller than one hundred and seventy-two centimeters
- More than a year of dating before marriage
- Sporty
- Parents who are still together
- Annual salary over fifty thousand yuan
- Between twenty-six and thirty-two years of age
- Willing to guarantee eating at least four dinners at home per week
- At least two ex-girlfriends but no more than four
- No Virgos, no Capricorns.
Do we have a reader who qualifies?
On the other hand, there are many so-called “leftover” women in China, who find it difficult to find a mate:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/the_startling_plight_of_china_s_leftover_ladies?page=full
What’s going on here? Have women collectively set the price of marriage too high, and it just has yet to fall back toward a clearing price?
I’m curious to know what percentage of Chinese meet all the requirements. It’s surely small.
Interesting that in China the picky women want a man who is “Willing to guarantee eating at least four dinners at home per week”. The American gold digger equivalent would be “Willing to guarantee NOT making me cook dinner at home more than four times per week”.
One child policy was announced in 1980, so any prospective husband would have to have been born under the policy (just). This seems to make the “No only children” a very limiting condition.
I wonder what is wrong with Wuhan? Its website describes it as “The capital of the Hubei province a modern metropolis with unlimited possibilities, situated in the heart of China” Sounds wonderful!
Steve, you’ve not even covered all the standard screening tools given in those sites. The largest is Jiayuan: http://search.jiayuan.com/ (NASDAQ: DATE)
The search criteria include (in order):
Age Max/Min
Location
Height Max/Min
Education
Residence situation (don’t own apartment/already own apartment/rent apartment/live with family/etc)
Monthly Income
Marriage Background
Car ownership
Employment Industry
Children status
Company type (SOE/Govt/Listed company/Top Global 500/etc)
Hukou (Residence permit)
Blood Type
Birthplace
Chinese Birthyear Animal
Ethnicity
Western astrology sign
Religion
These are just the ones which have pull-down menu options.
These don’t seem that hard (for a Westerner, at least). 172cm is about 5cm below the American average, and 50k yuan is only about US$8k. I’ve heard of vastly more onerous requirements from Western girls.
So close, but I’ll be 35 by the time I complete my Masters. Oh, doomed to be forever alone…
Keith raises an interesting point. It seems that there are many men at the socio-economic bottom and women at the top without partners. The fate of the men is probably directly linked to the gender imbalance, but that of the women is also due to cultural factors. If we suppose that high status men are concerned about the status and beauty of their spouse. As there are more women, the high status men have a larger pool to pick from, meaning they are more likely to find a sufficiently attractive wife that they do not need to consider the status. The high status women do not have any high status men to marry, and do not want to marry the low status men, however beautiful they are.
Reminds me of this:
http://www.yanivstopnitzky.com//home6/landsbur/public_html//home6/landsbur/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/stopnitzky-jmp4.pdf
(Found it on MarginalRevolution.com some time ago.)
I’ll agree to eating at home four times a week if she agrees not to be there.
Interesting post…it seems to me, in the US at least, there are more strictly gay men than are strictly lesbian women. I wonder if this is also true in China. Certainly, as a straight man I welcome ever more gay men, while hoping the lesbian population stays constant. Straight men everyday should be thankful that gay men exist, and especially straight men in china.
On a side note, ive spent some time on match.com and always find it somewhat humorous when a 5ft 0-2ish inch woman lists as her minimum height something like 5’10+.
I was reading through the list, and I honestly passed all of them until the last one. Virgo, damn.
Does anyone know why she would request “not from Wuhan”? Are there negative stereotypes about that city?
Bennett: “Interesting that in China the picky women want a man who is “Willing to guarantee eating at least four dinners at home per week”. The American gold digger equivalent would be “Willing to guarantee NOT making me cook dinner at home more than four times per week”.
She didn’t say SHE’D be cooking those four dinners at home each week…
Jon:
Does anyone know why she would request “not from Wuhan”?
The only tidbit I can offer is that, according to the New Yorker article, she herself is from Wuhan.
I believe it was Anna Quindlen a decade ago who pointed out that this is what would bring oppressed women around the world into equality. I did not believe it then and I seriously doubt that this would have happened in China without the significant social changes that have happened there with the introduction of the internet. It is still a control thing.
@Jon: Never dated a man from Wuhan have you?
So someone born in the year of the elephant is OK?
Zhenai, a Chinese dating website that competes with Jiayuan, also has a field to list how much money you have deposited at the bank.
I’m slightly too old, but other than that I think I’m her man.
Oh whoops I have been married. I skimmed over the first point because it was so obvious.
The armchair analysis certainly didn’t predict an increased rate of single women. Looks like we need a more detailed model.
Doesn’t say that he has to be Asian.
How ’bout this: The woman who made this ad is a closeted lesbian (or Penelope from The Odyssey). That is, she is attempting to convince others that she is seeking a husband — but is doing so in a way calculated to ensure that no husband is found.
Bob Murphy:
I’m slightly too old, but other than that I think I’m her man.
You never told me that you’re not from Wuhan!
I would have guessed that the skewed sex ratio results in girls marrying younger and boys marrying older? And maybe more widowers and less widows apart from the gender based differences?
Depending on what “dinner at home” means, I meet all the criteria – I would guess that a fairly large percentage of my friends do as well, and a fair number of them are single – clearly there are gains from trade available here, if only it weren’t for pesky immigration laws…
re 27: “a fairly large percentage of my friends [fit the criteria]and a fair number of them are single”
Ummm. First listed criterion?
An outbreak of Murphyism perhaps?
As pertaining to Wuhan, as well as other cities in China, there are stereotypes of the residents so to speak. For example, many may hold that people from the north are more vulgar, Wuhan people are more cunning and Shanghai people more selfish. But these are largely stereotypes, not (entirely) my personal view. I am Chinese.
Professor, as a Chinese female students who may pursue a MA degree in the future, I’m compelled to say that some terms in the list are sort of funny (no offence), for example, Not from Wuhan. I can’t see the reason behind this. lol Also, most women in China, either well-educated or good-looking, expect the guy’s annual income to be much more than 50k Yuan.
@Ken B – a fairly large percentage of my single friends (in fact, the vast majority) have never been married. Is that unusual?
@Ken B – I think I know understand what you mean, but it is also the case that a fair number of my friends who are not single have never been married (I fall into this category myself).
@John Faben: I was riffing on your wording, which seems to say ‘many of my friends including the red ones meet *all* the criteria and some of them meet the criteria of being blue’, red not being blue. Mostly I was looking for a chance to get in a shot at RPM, who made that exact error too. :)
@John Faben: re comment 30. It’s age. Most of my single friends are divorced. I’m older than you I expect …
The more picky you can be, the even pickier you are.
I have enjoyed reading online dating sites for laughs (and truly looking just for laughs). In part, people are forced to make some selections (e.g., age or height of prospective mate). One has to wonder how the 43 y-o came up with 37 to 46 for the range (you’d really not want an otherwise excellent 36 or 47 y-o?). Of course, much of this is like asking people about economic motives: do they really know why and would they be truthful? Maybe they’d be fine with 36 (or 26 or 52), but fear it sends a signal.
How much of this is like my saying, “ceteris paribus I’d like good parking if I took a new job”? (Parking is often an issue when you work at a university.) Sure, it would break a tie, but is there ever a tie? All and all, I’d ask for a woman with an eidetic memory. That could really come in handy some times. But, should I list it as desired trait? (Of course, I couldn’t afford to limit my options to such a small proportion of the population.)
I get a chuckle when the 4’11” woman states she wants men 6’2” and taller. Then again, as a 5’8” guy, I am amused that it is socially acceptable for a women to request a tall mate, but I’m consider a cad if I want her buxom. Both are determined by DNA (and I can’t change the one she cares about). Since I post under my actual name, I feel obliged to point out there is tongue-in-cheek humor here.
I am from China and I probably know why males from Wuhan are rejected! Chinese all know that Wuhan men like boasting and bragging. And there is also a saying goes ‘If there is a nine-headed bird flying in the say, It must be reported by a Wuhan man!’ Here is the chinese, you can google translate it! 天上九头鸟，地下湖北佬。
Hey, that’s only 17 dimensions of compatability.
After living in Shenzhen in Guangdong province I can tell you that none of my Chinese friends prefer to meet using dating services like this. They are typically only used by people who are not fortunate enough to have found a GF/BF through the most common method, which is through friend of a friend or a classmate.
Don’t put too much stock in believing this is actually how a large fraction of Chinese date.