IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esx/essedp/2594.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Anyone be "The" One? Evidence on Mate Selection from Speed Dating

Author

Listed:
  • Belot, M
  • Francesconi, M

Abstract

Marriage data show a strong degree of positive assortative mating along a variety of attributes. But since marriage is an equilibrium outcome, it is unclear whether positive sorting is the result of preferences rather than opportunities. We assess the relative importance of preferences and opportunities in dating behaviour, using unique data from a large commercial speed dating agency. While the speed dating design gives us a direct observation of individual preferences, the random allocation of participants across events generates an exogenous source of variation in opportunities and allows us to identify the role of opportunities separately from that of preferences. We find that both women and men equally value physical attributes, such as age and weight, and that there is positive sorting along age, height, and education. The role of individual preferences, however, is outplayed by that of opportunities. Along some attributes (such as occupation, height and smoking) opportunities explain almost all the estimated variation in demand. Along other attributes (such as age), the role of preferences is more substantial, but never dominant. Despite this, preferences have a part when we observe a match, i.e., when two individuals propose to one another.

Suggested Citation

  • Belot, M & Francesconi, M, 2006. "Can Anyone be "The" One? Evidence on Mate Selection from Speed Dating," Economics Discussion Papers 2594, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:esx:essedp:2594
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repository.essex.ac.uk/2594/
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eugene Choo & Aloysius Siow, 2006. "Who Marries Whom and Why," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(1), pages 175-201, February.
    2. Robert Shimer & Lones Smith, 2000. "Assortative Matching and Search," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(2), pages 343-370, March.
    3. Per-Anders Edin & Peter Fredriksson & Olof Åslund, 2003. "Ethnic Enclaves and the Economic Success of Immigrants—Evidence from a Natural Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 329-357.
    4. Linda Y. Wong, 2003. "Structural Estimation of Marriage Models," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(3), pages 699-728, July.
    5. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Bagnoli, Mark, 1993. "Courtship as a Waiting Game," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 185-202, February.
    6. David Marmaros & Bruce Sacerdote, 2006. "How Do Friendships Form?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(1), pages 79-119.
    7. Heidrun C. Hoppe & Benny Moldovanu & Aner Sela, 2009. "The Theory of Assortative Matching Based on Costly Signals," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 253-281.
    8. Alberto Bisin & Giorgio Topa & Thierry Verdier, 2004. "Religious Intermarriage and Socialization in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 615-664, June.
    9. Micere Keels & Greg Duncan & Stefanie Deluca & Ruby Mendenhall & James Rosenbaum, 2005. "Fifteen years later: Can residential mobility programs provide a long-term escape from neighborhood segregation, crime, and poverty," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 42(1), pages 51-73, February.
    10. Lones Smith, 2006. "The Marriage Model with Search Frictions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1124-1146, December.
    11. Ken Burdett & Melvyn G. Coles, 1997. "Marriage and Class," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 141-168.
    12. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    13. Raymond Fisman & Sheena S. Iyengar & Emir Kamenica & Itamar Simonson, 2006. "Gender Differences in Mate Selection: Evidence From a Speed Dating Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 673-697.
    14. Richard H. Steckel, 1995. "Stature and the Standard of Living," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1903-1940, December.
    15. Pencavel, John, 1998. "Assortative Mating by Schooling and the Work Behavior of Wives and Husbands," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 326-329, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The short wingman – do humans use visual illusions to attract a mate?
      by Jason in Evolving Economics on 2010-09-23 11:01:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barr, Abigail & Dekker, Marleen & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2012. "Bridging the Gender Divide: An Experimental Analysis of Group Formation in African Villages," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 2063-2077.
    2. Deja, Dominik & Karbowski, Adam & Zawisza, Mateusz, 2014. "On the Existence of Optimal Level of Women’s Intelligence in Men’s Perception: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment," MPRA Paper 60782, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Dec 2014.
    3. Eva Raiber & Weiwei Ren & Jeanne Bovet & Paul Seabright & Charlotte Wang, 2023. "What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 71(3), pages 903-939.
    4. Belot, Michèle & Fidrmuc, Jan, 2010. "Anthropometry of love: Height and gender asymmetries in interethnic marriages," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 361-372, December.
    5. Margherita Comola & Marcel Fafchamps, 2014. "Testing Unilateral and Bilateral Link Formation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(579), pages 954-976, September.
    6. Ran Abramitzky & Adeline Delavande & Luis Vasconcelos, 2011. "Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 124-157, July.
    7. Comola, Margherita & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2014. "Estimating Mis-reporting in Dyadic Data: Are Transfers Mutually Beneficial?," IZA Discussion Papers 8664, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Soohyung Lee, 2008. "Preferences and Choice Constraints in Marital Sorting: Evidence From Korea," Discussion Papers 07-042, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    9. Arcand, Jean-Louis & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2012. "Matching in community-based organizations," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 203-219.
    10. Dalton Conley & Brian J. McCabe, 2011. "Body Mass Index and Physical Attractiveness: Evidence From a Combination Image-Alteration/List Experiment," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 40(1), pages 6-31, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francesconi, Marco & Belot, Michèle, 2007. "Can anyone be ‘the’ one? Field evidence on dating behavior," ISER Working Paper Series 2007-17, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Michèle Belot & Marco Francesconi, 2013. "Dating Preferences and Meeting Opportunities in Mate Choice Decisions," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(2), pages 474-508.
    3. Ran Abramitzky & Adeline Delavande & Luis Vasconcelos, 2011. "Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 124-157, July.
    4. Soohyung Lee, 2008. "Preferences and Choice Constraints in Marital Sorting: Evidence From Korea," Discussion Papers 07-042, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    5. Aloysius Siow & Eugene Choo, 2007. "Lifecycle marriage matching: Theory and Evidence," 2007 Meeting Papers 550, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Belot, Michèle & Fidrmuc, Jan, 2010. "Anthropometry of love: Height and gender asymmetries in interethnic marriages," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 361-372, December.
    7. Bjerk, David, 2009. "Beauty vs. earnings: Gender differences in earnings and priorities over spousal characteristics in a matching model," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 248-259, March.
    8. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2013-044 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Chris Bidner, 2014. "A spillover-based theory of credentialism," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1387-1425, November.
    10. Poeschel, Friedrich, 2012. "Assortative matching through signals," IAB-Discussion Paper 201215, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    11. Mario Vozar, 2010. "The Effect of Time in a Multi-Dimensional Marriage Market Model," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp417, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    12. Jan Eeckhout & Philipp Kircher, 2010. "Sorting and Decentralized Price Competition," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(2), pages 539-574, March.
    13. Parakhonyak, Alexey & Popov, Sergey V, 2019. "Same-Sex Marriage, The Great Equalizer," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2019/2, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    14. Nicolas Vaillant & François-Charles Wolff, 2011. "Positive and negative preferences in human mate selection," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 273-291, June.
    15. Bidner, Chris, 2010. "Pre-match investment with frictions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 23-34, January.
    16. Günter Hitsch & Ali Hortaçsu & Dan Ariely, 2010. "What makes you click?—Mate preferences in online dating," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 393-427, December.
    17. Maristella Botticini & Aloysius Siow, 2011. "Are There Increasing Returns to Scale in Marriage Markets?," Working Papers 395, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    18. Aloysius Siow, 2015. "Testing Becker's Theory of Positive Assortative Matching," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 409-441.
    19. Coles, Melvyn & Francesconi, Marco, 2007. "On the Emergence of Toyboys: Equilibrium Matching with Ageing and Uncertain Careers," IZA Discussion Papers 2612, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Chloe Qianzi Zeng, 2012. "Matching with Contracts: An Efficient Marriage Market?," Economics Series Working Papers 630, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    21. Lones Smith & Axel Anderson, 2002. "Assortative Matching, Reputation, and the Beatles Break-Up," Game Theory and Information 0201002, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:esx:essedp:2594. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Essex Economics Web Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edessuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.