Driving home from work something occurred to me about the information in posting #3. I sent off an email to someone in my professional chat group who has expertise in the area of statistics and demographics asking if my thoughts were correct or not. He read posting #2 and posting #3 and sent back his observations. We should keep them in mind when reading these postings.
The statistics I provided show that there are 2.2% fewer boys born each year then girls. The percentage was arrived at after looking at the total number of births in the US. There is no argument with the percentage arrived at since there is hard data to back it up. Here is where the problem is: The percentage does not hold true/may not hold true for every segment demographically. That is, there are sections of the country or demographic groups within the country where the statistic may be higher or lower. The "male deficit" is not evenly spread out across all births to all groups.
What does that mean when we look at the "shidduch crisis"? If we are saying that the supposed crisis is caused by more girls then boys being available for shidduchim at any given time, based on the birth statistics for the country as a whole, we could be incorrect. The professor I questioned said that it could just as easily be possible that in the frum community taken as a whole, the numbers of males and females could be even, or there could be more males, or the 2.2% could be far smaller, and these numbers could vary in any given year. Unless we have specific numbers for our frum demographic group, or sub-groups within the frum community, we cannot apply the 2.2% with numerical certainty.
Whatever is causing the "shidduch crisis" everyone talks about just may not be a disparity in numbers. In my head I decided to test his words. I looked only at myself, my siblings and my husband's siblings, at the children born to us. Number of boys: 10. Number of girls: 7. For my immediate family the disparity in numbers does not follow the national percentage. Then I looked at my block. Boys: 6. Girls: 10. On my block the numbers are far higher then the national percentage. Now I looked at my first cousins and their children born. Boys: 15. Girls: 7. My husband's first cousins. Boys: 4. Girls: 3. I picked 4 families at random out of my personal phone book. Boys: 11. Girls: 7.
Okay, this is not a controlled scientific experiment, but what I am seeing, just randomly looking at members of the frum community I know, is that there are more boys then girls. This may not hold true if I look at larger numbers of people in the frum community. Or it could hold true. Or the numbers could vary if I looked at specific ages only--that is, among six year olds what do the numbers show. Or the numbers may even out to 50-50. In short, the frum community may show numbers different from the national average. And this could vary from year to year. And it could vary also depending on geographic location. The numbers in one subgroup in New York might be different from the numbers in the same subgroup in a different city.
Experiment yourself. Look at your extended family and do the math. Look at your block. Look at a handful of friends. How are the numbers working? Let me know what you find out. It just could be that we are basing all our "panic" about the boy/girl ratios on information that does not apply to our demographic groups--the groups of frum Klal. Or it may be that only certain ages are affected. Or it may be that only certain geographic locations are affected.
10 comments:
family 1:
boys girls
2 3
family 2-7:
6 5
3 1
0 5
2 3
1 2
0 2
0 1
Slightly off topic but to the same point:
You have to factor in the ages that the two genders begin dating.
(if this is getting ahead of things feel free no to post:)
My children - 3 girls/2 boys
My parents grandchildren - 5 girls/7 boys
My parents children - 2 girls/2 boys
My grandparents grandchildren - 9 girls/8 boys
My in-laws grandchildren - 6 girls/7 boys
None of this is very useful because the ages vary all over the place, and the people listed here live everywhere (New York, Baltimore, Atlanta, California, Petach Tikvah, South Florida, etc)
Just a note...I did mention above that the general numbers might not be as useful as looking at each age group--how many 8 year olds, how many 10 year olds etc. And this is where G's point would also come in--at what age does someone begin dating. If an 18 year old girl is looking for a 20 or 21 year old boy, how many boys and girls are there in each of those categories? And how do the numbers in those categories break down by sub-groups ie. how many modern orthodox, how many yeshivish etc. per age group? And then you would need to look at how those numbers break down within the age groups and the sub-groups geographically--are the same numbers present in Los Angeles as in New York, for instance?
Myself and my siblings: 4 girls
My husband and his siblings: 2 boys and 2 girls
My children: 4 boys and one girl
Our nieces and nephews: 17 boys and 12 girls
Great nieces and nephews: 2 boys and 3 girls.
My mechutanim: 3 bys and 2 girls
All of us are in the New York City area, covering Brooklyn and Queens except two nephews and one niece who are in New Jersey. Yes the children and children's children are mostly different ages although a few are the same. but for my family we don't seem to have the more girls then boys as a general rule. Bad4shiduchim shows more girls then boys but my family sort of closes up that difference by having more boys then girls.
I guess we would need more numbers and dividing them into each age as you suggested but from just these few numbers I don't see a crisis yet.
Thanks ProfK for explaining about "shidduchim" and exposing me to a very interesting phenomenom. In the natural world some animal species form exclusive subgroupings within the species. They mate exclusively within their own group. Should extraneous factors threaten the reproductive level necessary to maintain the group these groups react in one of three major ways: if they practice monogamous pairing of mating couples they may "suspend" this monagamy allowing multiple pairings; they may raid other subgroups for females so that they can bring reproductive levels up; they may do neither of the previous two things, basically willing themselves into extinction. With the first two options for action, once the threat has been removed from the group they revert back to their original practices.
From the material in the postings and from comments I have been reading it would seem that the various groups that comprise the orthodox jewish world are divided along the lines of the exclusive subgroupings among animal species. If there is a problem with providing sufficient "mates" for all who need them, thereby threatening reproductive levels that will maintain the group, it would seem that some sort of cooperation between the groups would be necessary. You were correct in surmising that you cannot know if the male birth disparity affects each of these groups the same way.
Perhaps the question to be asked is why would one group not initiate cooperation with another if survival is threatened. In the animal world territoriality sometimes comes into play. If one group dies out there are more natural resources available for the groups that remain. I would like to think that human beings have evolved beyond that.
I would imagine that it would be beneficial to study each sub group to determine exact numbers of males and females at each age level. While this would not tell you precisely why some people get married and some don't--there are multiple other factors--it would give you a sound numerical basis to be going on with.
Thanks for saving me from having to mark yet another set of impossible final projects--your postings were so much more interesting. Remind me again why we both teach?
Shouldn't this all work out like when you flip a coin? If you flip a coin long enough then you will get to the point where you have equal numbers of heads and tails. If you produce enough kids then the male and female should work out like the heads and tails. No? Since the frum part of the population has more kids, way more kids then the regular population then shouldn't the numbers be virtually equal or getting there?
Come on, could we lighten up a little here. Shidduchim isn't like animal groups or flipping coins or studies with all kinds of statistics. When you have 50 prisoners and 50 coats in one room then every prisoner gets a coat and none are left over because there is no choice. Put 50 shoppers into a store and show them 50 coats and some of the people will walk out without a coat. Show them 100 coats and some will still not buy a coat. Jut because a coat is there doesn't mean a person will like it or it will fit. Same with shidduchim. Even if the numbers were all even of males and females there would still be some people who didn't get married because they didn't like the selection.
I'll grant you your point anonymous 9:47 that just because you had 50 males and 50 females that wouldn't mean they would all choose each other. But what would happen if you had 50 shoppers and only 40 coats? Or what would happen if you had 40 shoppers and 50 coats? At least with 50 shoppers and 50 coats you have a theoretical chance that everyone would get something.
I leave my blog readers alone for just one day and they all start waxing philosophical on me.
Good grief Arnie, I can't believe you actually came to the blog, much less commented. Weren't you the one who said you would never visit a blog because why should you go to something that sounds like elephants puking?
I thought for sure I could prove you wrong so I called my sister. My sister teaches in a yeshiva that has a boys school and a girls school. They cap each class at 22 students. My sister says that there are the same number of classes in the boys school that there are in the girls school except for the sixth grade boys which has one more class and the third grade girls which also has one more class. That looks to me like an even number of boys and girls. Of course, there re plenty of other yeshivas and they may do things diferently but the numbers don't look so uneven when you actually look at the class sizes. Maybe just another urban myth?
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