What do dating apps have to do with the Gini coefficient?

For someone who studies the effects of technology on society, this study by three economists at the St Louis Federal Reserve, “Marriage market sorting in the US”, caught my attention: it turns out that the growth in the use of dating apps in the United States over recent decades, (in 1998 only 2% of people met their spouse online; by 2017, that figure was 50%), has caused a significant rise in income inequality because people segment potential candidates based on education and wage.

According to the conclusions of the study, in a market with a growing range of options to choose from at the swipe of a finger, the number of marriages has not increased, suggesting that dating apps, which are tanking on the stock markets, are used much more for casual hookups than the search for sustainable relationships, which ultimately leads users to remove their profiles.

But beyond the number of marriages or the tendency to establish stable couples, what’s interesting about this is that faced with a wider set of candidates to choose from, what we see is an increase in income inequality. The most important factors contributing to household income inequality are selection based on education (35%) and skills (30%), followed significantly by selection based on income (15%) and age (15%). Selection by race (5%) plays a relatively…

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