Blue = more men than women, Red = more women than men US Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey, marital status by sex and age. Over the past forty years, there has been a remarkable flip-flop in the ratio of single males to single females, particularly in the reproductive age bracket. Beginning in the late... Read More

When Pedersen wrote the above almost two decades ago, he did not exactly fear the new marriage market of too many men chasing too few women. In fact, his prognosis was largely upbeat. There would be “lower divorce rates�, “greater marital stability�, “enhanced marital satisfaction for women�, “greater commitment by males to procurement of economic... Read More

Among early modern humans, men faced less mate competition with increasing distance from the equator. They were proportionately fewer in number and fewer of them could afford a second wife. This was partly because hunting distances were correspondingly longer, so that more men died of hunting fatalities, and partly because longer winters made polygyny costlier.... Read More