Attraction Inequality and the Dating Economy

written by Bradford Tuckfield

Jesus said that the poor would always be with us. Despite the best efforts of philanthropists and redistributionists over the last two millennia, he has been right so far. Every nation in the world has poor and rich, separated by birth and luck and choice. The inequality between rich and poor, and its causes and remedies, are discussed ad nauseam in public policy debates, campaign platforms, and social media screeds.

However, the relentless focus on inequality among politicians is usually quite narrow: they tend to consider inequality only in monetary terms, and to treat “inequality” as basically synonymous with “income inequality.” There are so many other types of inequality that get air time less often or not at all: inequality of talent, height, number of friends, longevity, inner peace, health, charm, gumption, intelligence, and fortitude. And finally, there is a type of inequality that everyone thinks about occasionally and that young single people obsess over almost constantly: inequality of sexual attractiveness.

The economist Robin Hanson has written some fascinating articles that use the cold and inhuman logic economists are famous for to compare inequality of income to inequality of access to sex. If we follow a few steps of his reasoning, we can imagine the world of dating as something like an economy, in which people possess different amounts of attractiveness (the dating economy’s version of dollars) and those with more attractiveness can access more and better romantic experiences (the dating economy’s version of consumer goods). If we think of dating in this way, we can use the analytical tools of economics to reason about romance in the same way we reason about economies.

One of the useful tools that economists use to study inequality is the Gini coefficient. This is simply a number between zero and one that is meant to represent the degree of income inequality in any given nation or group. An egalitarian group in which each individual has the same income would have a Gini coefficient of zero, while an unequal group in which one individual had all the income and the rest had none would have a Gini coefficient close to one. When Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett walks into a room, the Gini coefficient of the room shoots up.

Some enterprising data nerds have taken on the challenge of estimating Gini coefficients for the dating “economy.” Among heterosexuals, this actually means calculating two Gini coefficients: one for men, and one for women. This is because heterosexual men and heterosexual women essentially occupy two distinct “economies” or “worlds,” with men competing only with each other for women and women competing only with each other for men. The Gini coefficient for men collectively is determined by women’s collective preferences, and vice versa. If women all find every man equally attractive, the male dating economy will have a Gini coefficient of zero. If men all find the same one woman attractive and consider all other women unattractive, the female dating economy will have a Gini coefficient close to one. The two coefficients do not directly influence each other at all, and each sex collectively sets the Gini coefficient—that is, the level of inequality—for the other sex.

A data scientist representing the popular dating app “Hinge” reported on the Gini coefficients he had found in his company’s abundant data, treating “likes” as the equivalent of income. He reported that heterosexual females faced a Gini coefficient of 0.324, while heterosexual males faced a much higher Gini coefficient of 0.542. So neither sex has complete equality: in both cases, there are some “wealthy” people with access to more romantic experiences and some “poor” who have access to few or none. But while the situation for women is something like an economy with some poor, some middle class, and some millionaires, the situation for men is closer to a world with a small number of super-billionaires surrounded by huge masses who possess almost nothing. According to the Hinge analyst:


On a list of 149 countries’ Gini indices provided by the CIA World Factbook, this would place the female dating economy as 75th most unequal (average—think Western Europe) and the male dating economy as the 8th most unequal (kleptocracy, apartheid, perpetual civil war—think South Africa).

Quartz reported on this finding, and also cited another article about an experiment with Tinder that claimed that that “the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.” These studies examined “likes” and “swipes” on Hinge and Tinder, respectively, which are required if there is to be any contact (via messages) between prospective matches.

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Another study, reported in Business Insider, found a pattern in messaging on dating apps that is consistent with these findings. Yet another study, run by OkCupid on their huge datasets, found that women rate 80 percent of men as “worse-looking than medium,” and that this 80 percent “below-average” block received replies to messages only about 30 percent of the time or less. By contrast, men rate women as worse-looking than medium only about 50 percent of the time, and this 50 percent below-average block received message replies closer to 40 percent of the time or higher.

If these findings are to be believed, the great majority of women are only willing to communicate romantically with a small minority of men while most men are willing to communicate romantically with most women. The degree of inequality in “likes” and “matches” credibly measures the degree of inequality in attractiveness, and necessarily implies at least that degree of inequality in romantic experiences. It seems hard to avoid a basic conclusion: that the majority of women find the majority of men unattractive and not worth engaging with romantically, while the reverse is not true. Stated in another way, it seems that men collectively create a “dating economy” for women with relatively low inequality, while women collectively create a “dating economy” for men with very high inequality.

Social commentators today are very interested in “gender gaps,” especially the alleged difference in pay between men and women who do the same work. There are other notable gaps, including a “libido gap” that is well-documented in scientific literature (with men desiring sex much more frequently and intensely than women on average) and also an “age gap” in which younger adults are described as more attractive on average, with an especially large age disadvantage for older women. The Gini coefficient gap indicated in these studies is something like a “sexual inequality gap” or “attractiveness distribution gap,” less obvious but potentially even more socially significant than some other better-known gender gaps.

There are no villains in this story. Nobody can or should be blamed for his or her honest preferences, and if women collectively believe that most men are unattractive, what grounds does anyone, male or female, have to argue with them? We may pity the large majority of men who are regarded as unattractive and who have few or no romantic experiences while a small percentage of attractive men have many. Just as much, consider that we live in a monogamous culture, and so the 20 percent of men who are regarded as attractive can only be in committed relationships with at most 20 percent of women. We may just as well pity the rest of the women, who are destined to be in committed relationships, if they pursue a relationship at all, with someone who they regard as unattractive. The only villain in this story is nature, which has molded our preferences so that this tragic mismatch of attraction and availability occurs.

To those who study nature, the various gender gaps in romantic life will not come as a surprise. Evolutionary biologists have seen these types of patterns many times before and can explain each of them. The relative perceived attractiveness of younger women vs. older can be explained by the higher fertility of younger adult women. The libido gap can be explained by the different mating strategies instinctively pursued by the distinct sexes.

As for the different Gini coefficients consistently reported for men and women, they are not consistent with a monogamous social structure in which most people can pair with someone of comparable perceived attractiveness. However, this is not surprising: monogamy is rare in nature. The revealed preference among most women to attempt to engage romantically only with the same small percentage of men who are perceived as attractive is consistent with the social system called “polygyny,” in which a small percentage of males monopolize the mating opportunities with all females, while many other males have no access to mates. Again, this will not come as a surprise to scientists. The evolutionary biologist David P. Barash wrote an article in Psychology Today titled “People Are Polygynous,”citing extensive biological and historical evidence that throughout most of history, our species has practiced “harem polygyny,” a form of polygamy.

There are many animals of all kinds that practice polygyny in one form or another, including many of our primate relatives like gorillas and lemurs. For animals, social structures are not an object of reflection or systematic attempted reform—they just do what their instincts and upbringing dictate. But it is the destiny of humans to constantly fight against nature. We light fires for warmth, build air conditioners for cooling, invent soap and plumbing and antibiotics and trains and radios in an effort to conquer the constraints of nature. But when we turn on our smartphones built on ingeniously developed transistors that show we can overcome nature’s entropy, we log on to dating apps and enter a world that is built on shadows of the social structures of our primeval savanna ancestors. Technology has not enabled us to escape the brutal social inequalities dictated by our animal natures.

This is not to say that we haven’t tried. The institution of monogamy is itself a “redistributive” type of policy: like capping the income of billionaires, it caps the total allowed romantic partners of the most attractive, so that unattractive people have much better chances to find a partner. The marriages that we read about in historical accounts that are based on prudence and family arrangement make more sense when we realize that basing marriage on mutual attraction leads so many—both men and women—to be unsatisfied with the outcome, since most women find most men unattractive. All of the world’s great religious traditions have extolled chastity as a great virtue and taught that there are higher goals than sexual satisfaction—these teachings add meaning to the otherwise “poor” lives of the majority of people who are regarded as perpetually unattractive.

Even in centuries-old fairy tales like The Frog Prince and Beauty and the Beast, we see our culture’s attempt to come to terms with the paradigm of a woman regarded as attractive pairing with a man who she regards as unattractive. The differing Gini coefficients faced by men and women guarantee that this will be a common—or even the most common—romantic pairing in a monogamous culture. In these fairy tales (depending on which version you read), the beautiful woman first accepts or even loves the hideous man. The sincere love of a woman transforms the unattractive man into something better: more handsome, richer, and royal. Allegorically, these stories are trying to show men and women a way to relate one-on-one even though most women find most men unattractive; they are trying to show that sincerely offered love, and love based on something other than sexual attraction, can transmute ugliness to beauty and make even a relationship with unmatching attractiveness levels successful.

As Western civilization declines or at least frays at the edges, the ways our culture has developed to deal with the gap in the attractiveness distribution are receding and dying. Young people enter the equality-inducing institution of monogamy later and later or not at all, spending more time in a chaotically unequal polygynous dating world. Monogamy itself is weaker, as divorce becomes easier and even married people often report encountering “dead bedrooms” in which one or both spouses feel no obligation to give a partner who they do not regard as sufficiently attractive access to sexual experiences. Religious belief is in constant decline, and with it declines the belief in the dignity of celibacy or the importance of anything other than hedonism (sexual or otherwise). Even fairy tales that for centuries helped us understand how to live charitably with each other are disavowed and cultural tastemakers like Time Magazine and the BBC denigrate them as sexist.

The result of these cultural changes is that the highly unequal social structures of the prehistoric savanna homo sapiens are reasserting themselves, and with them the dissatisfactions of the unattractive “sexually underprivileged” majority are coming back. It is ironic that the progressives who cheer on the decline of religion and the weakening of “outdated” institutions like monogamy are actually acting as the ultimate reactionaries, returning us to the oldest and most barbaric, unequal animal social structures that have ever existed. In this case it is the conservatives who are cheering for the progressive ideal of “sexual income redistribution” through a novel invention: monogamy.

As always, the way forward will be difficult. It may be impossible to revive the religions, behaviors, institutions, and norms that have recently governed the world of love and sex but are in retreat around the world. The future of Western civilization may need brave new institutions and brave new ways for men and women to fruitfully relate to each other. Whatever rules govern the future of dating and sex, they should find a way to deal with the polygynous instincts that our species has historically possessed and that show up in the present day in the statistics of our dating apps, or else be willing to accept the risk of sexual conflict and war that have historically accompanied high inequality. Technologies and institutions and even religions come and go, but the evidence indicates that sexiness inequality is here to stay and that we will ignore it only at our peril.


Bradford Tuckfield is a data scientist in New York.

La desintegración del amor en la sociedad occidental

La desintegración del amor en la sociedad occidental

(Fragmento de El Arte de Amar, de Erich Fromm)

Si el amor es una capacidad del carácter maduro, productivo, de ello se sigue que la capacidad de amar de un individuo perteneciente a cualquier cultura dada depende de la influencia que esa cultura ejerce sobre el carácter de la persona media. Al hablar del amor en la cultura occidental contemporánea, entendemos preguntar si la estructura social de la civilización occidental y el espíritu que de ella resulta llevan al desarrollo del amor. Plantear tal interrogante es contestarlo negativamente. Ningún observador objetivo de nuestra vida occidental puede dudar de que el amor -fraterno, materno y erótico- es un fenómeno relativamente raro, y que en su lugar hay cierto número de formas de pseudoamor, que son, en realidad, otras tantas formas de la desintegración del amor.

La sociedad capitalista se basa en el principio de libertad política, por un lado, y del mercado como regulador de todas las relaciones económicas, y por lo tanto, sociales, por el otro. El mercado de productos determina las condiciones que rigen el intercambio de mercancías, y el mercado del trabajo regula la adquisición y venta de la mano de obra. Tanto las cosas útiles como la energía y la habilidad humanas se transforman en artículos que se intercambian sin utilizar la fuerza y sin fraude en las condiciones del mercado. Los zapatos, por útiles y necesarios que sean, carecen de valor económico (valor de intercambio) si no hay demanda de ellos en el mercado; la energía y la habilidad humanas no tienen valor de intercambio si no existe demanda en las condiciones existentes en el mercado. El poseedor de capital puede comprar mano de obra y hacerla trabajar para la provechosa inversión de su capital. El poseedor de mano de obra debe venderla a los capitalistas según las condiciones existentes en el mercado, o pasará hambre. Tal estructura económica se refleja en una jerarquía de valores. El capital domina al trabajo; las cosas acumuladas, lo que está muerto, tiene más valor que el trabajo, los poderes humanos, lo que está vivo.

Tal ha sido la estructura básica del capitalismo desde sus comienzos. Y si bien caracteriza todavía al capitalismo moderno, se han modificado ciertos factores que dan al capitalismo contemporáneo sus cualidades específicas y ejercen una honda influencia sobre la estructura caracterológica del hombre moderno. Como resultado del desarrollo del capitalismo, presenciamos un proceso siempre creciente de centralización y concentración del capital. Las grandes empresas se expanden continuamente, mientras las pequeñas se asfixian. La posesión del capital invertido en tales empresas está cada vez más separada de la función de administrarlas. Cientos de miles de accionistas “poseen” la empresa; una burocracia administrativa bien pagada, pero que no posee la empresa, la maneja. Esa burocracia está menos interesada en obtener beneficios máximos que en la expansión de la empresa, y en su propio poder. La concentración creciente de capital y el surgimiento de una poderosa burocracia administrativa corren parejas con el desarrollo del movimiento laboral. A través de la sindicalización del trabajo, el trabajador individual no tiene que comerciar por y para sí mismo en el mercado laboral; pertenece a grandes sindicatos, dirigidos también por una poderosa burocracia que lo representa ante los colosos industriales. La iniciativa ha pasado, para bien o para mal, del individuo a la burocracia, tanto en lo que respecta al capital como al trabajo. Un número cada vez mayor de individuos deja de ser independiente y comienza a depender de quienes dirigen los grandes imperios económicos.

Otro rasgo decisivo que resulta de esa concentración del capital, y característico del capitalismo moderno, es la forma específica de la organización del trabajo. Empresas sumamente centralizadas con una división radical del trabajo conducen a una organización donde el trabajador pierde su individualidad, en la que se convierte en un engranaje no indispensable de la máquina. El problema humano del capitalismo moderno puede formularse de la siguiente manera:

El capitalismo moderno necesita hombres que cooperen mansamente y en gran número; que quieran consumir cada vez más; y cuyos gustos estén estandarizados y puedan modificarse y anticiparse fácilmente. Necesita hombres que se sientan libres e independientes, no sometidos a ninguna autoridad, principio o conciencia moral -dispuestos, empero, a que los manejen, a hacer lo que se espera de ellos, a encajar sin dificultades en la maquinaria social-; a los que se pueda guiar sin recurrir a la fuerza, conducir, sin líderes, impulsar sin finalidad alguna -excepto la de cumplir, apresurarse, funcionar, seguir adelante-.

¿Cuál es el resultado? El hombre moderno está enajenado de sí mismo, de sus semejantes y de la naturaleza. Se ha transformado en un articulo, experimenta sus fuerzas vitales como una inversión que debe producirle el máximo de beneficios posible en las condiciones imperantes en el mercado. Las relaciones humanas son esencialmente las de autómatas enajenados, en las que cada uno basa su seguridad en mantenerse cerca del rebaño y en no diferir en el pensamiento, el sentimiento o la acción. Al mismo tiempo que todos tratan de estar tan cerca de los demás como sea posible, todos permanecen tremendamente solos, invadidos por el profundo sentimiento de inseguridad, de angustia y de culpa que surge siempre que es imposible superar la separatidad humana. Nuestra civilización ofrece muchos paliativos que ayudan a la gente a ignorar conscientemente esa soledad: en primer término, la estricta rutina del trabajo burocratizado y mecánico, que ayuda a la gente a no tomar conciencia de sus deseos humanos más fundamentales, del anhelo de trascendencia y unidad. En la medida en que la rutina sola no basta para lograr ese fin, el hombre se sobrepone a su desesperación inconsciente por medio de la rutina de la diversión, la consumición pasiva de sonidos y visiones que ofrece la industria del entretenimiento; y, además, por medio de la satisfacción de comprar siempre cosas nuevas y cambiarlas inmediatamente por otras. El hombre moderno está actualmente muy cerca de la imagen que Huxley describe en Un mundo feliz: bien alimentado, bien vestido, sexualmente satisfecho, y no obstante sin yo, sin contacto alguno, salvo el más superficial, con sus semejantes, guiado por los lemas que Huxley formula tan sucintamente, tales como: “Cuando el individuo siente, la comunidad tambalea”; o “Nunca dejes para mañana la diversión que puedes conseguir hoy”, o, como afirmación final: “Todo el mundo es feliz hoy en día.” La felicidad del hombre moderno consiste en “divertirse”. Divertirse significa la satisfacción de consumir y asimilar artículos, espectáculos, comida, bebidas, cigarrillos, gente, conferencias, libros, películas; todo se consume, se traga. El mundo es un enorme objeto de nuestro apetito, una gran manzana, una gran botella, un enorme pecho; todos succionamos, los eternamente expectantes, los esperanzados -y los eternamente desilusionados-. Nuestro carácter está equipado para intercambiar y recibir, para traficar y consumir; todo, tanto los objetos materiales, como los espirituales, se convierten en objeto de intercambio y de consumo.

La situación en lo que atañe al amor corresponde, inevitablemente, al carácter social del hombre moderno. Los autómatas no pueden amar, pueden intercambiar su “bagaje de personalidad” y confiar en que la transacción sea equitativa. Una de las expresiones más significativas del amor, y en especial del matrimonio con esa estructura enajenada, es la idea del “equipo”. En innumerables artículos sobre el matrimonio feliz, el ideal descrito es el de un equipo que funciona sin dificultades. Tal descripción no difiere demasiado de la idea de un empleado que trabaja sin inconvenientes; debe ser “razonablemente independiente”, cooperativo, tolerante, y al mismo tiempo ambicioso y agresivo. Así, el consejero matrimonial nos dice que el marido debe “comprender” a su mujer y ayudarla. Debe comentar favorablemente su nuevo vestido, y un plato sabroso. Ella, a su vez, debe mostrarse comprensiva cuando él llega a su hogar fatigado y de mal humor, debe escuchar atentamente sus comentarios sobre sus problemas en el trabajo, no debe mostrarse enojada sino comprensiva cuando él olvida su cumpleaños. Ese tipo de relaciones no significa otra cosa que una relación bien aceitada entre dos personas que siguen siendo extrañas toda su vida, que nunca logran una “relación central”, sino que se tratan con cortesía y se esfuerzan por hacer que el otro se sienta mejor.

En ese concepto del amor y el matrimonio, lo más importante es encontrar un refugio de la sensación de soledad que, de otro modo, sería intolerable. En el “amor” se encuentra, al fin, un remedio para la soledad. Se establece una alianza de dos contra el mundo, y se confunde ese egoísmo á deux con amor e intimidad.