Men delay marriage if women outnumber men

ANN ARBOR, Mich., June 10 (UPI) -- Where young women outnumber young men, marriage rates don't increase because the women compete for the affection of the men, U.S. researchers said.

However, Daniel Kruger of the University of Michigan said when those men reach their 30s, the reverse is true and proportionately more older men are married in areas where women outnumber men.

Kruger looked at the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States to test his hypothesis on how the balance between women and men affects marital patterns.

The study showed that men age 20-24 are more likely to cruise than to commit if they live in an area with more women than men.

One would think that rationally, fewer young men than women would naturally lead to proportionately more young men getting married, but that's not the case, Kruger said.

"Men have a greater reproductive benefit than women from having a greater quantity of relationships," Kruger said in a statement.

"If they can leverage their scarcity into attracting multiple short-term partners, they will not have as much of an incentive to settle down."

But, once those young men hit their 30s, they tend to shift from seeking short-term relationships to entering into committed relationships.

The findings are published in the published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology and the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology.