According to a Study Nonmarried Women at 40 Will Never Marry

@hhusted doesn't apply to me am happily hitched and so are most of my friends in NYC but I do have a college mate in NYC who is checks all the boxes- is over 40, a high earner and college educated and is currently single. I dont know about this study but NYC like many other world cities is a tough to live in when you are older and single for when you are hard at work all day for your demanding career you don't have much of a chance to socialize outside work and meet people unless you really make a concentrated effort to do so.

@hhusted Did you read that article? The study that says women over 40 won't marry was done during the EIGHTIES.

The article doesn't condemn women over 40 to never marry - it mentions the Pew study, which you have wrongly attributed, but actually talks more about another one from the Council of Contemporary Families.

The latter study focused on the question of whether educated women were less likely to marry or not, not whether unmarried over-40-year-olds were condemned to die cold and lonely, and the results weren't bad. It's called "Myths about College-Educated Women and Marriage," if that tells you anything. http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/marriage-partnership-divorce/marriagemyths.html

The study done by the Pew Research Center (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19marriage.html) actually talked about how men were more interested in marrying women with more education and resources than they have, making the aforementioned high-earning woman rather attractive rather than someone who may find it hard to attract a mate. Welcome to the modern age, people.

The Pew study showed that most recent economic gains made my men through marriage were higher than those made by women and that most men marry in search of a second breadwinner rather than a subordinate partner.

The problem the Pew study found isn't that no one wants these women, it's that the women are having a difficult time finding a suitable match - one that in terms of economics and education is their equal. It would seem that women are more interested in equality than men... any thoughts?

@BroadwayBK THANK YOU, BroadwayBK! Excellent analysis there.

The emphasis on equality as an attractive feature when looking for a prospective partner pretty much jibes with my intuitions and experience of modern dating. Men and women both look for an economic and intellectual match, and the couples who are imbalanced in one or both of these areas seem to be the exception, not the rule, in my own social life. That goes in both directions: men looking for women and women looking for men. So, exceptional women looking for an exceptional man would obviously have to look a bit longer and more carefully--