Bloomberg Says Elite Dating Apps Could Increase Inequality

Bloomberg has run an article with the headline “Elite Dating Apps Threaten to Make America’s Wealth Gap Worse”.

It argues that a “new crop” of selective platforms are encouraging wealthy, educated millennials to get together in cities like New York and San Francisco.

This encouragement complements the sociological process of assortative mating, whereby singles increasingly seek partners with a similar level of education to themselves.

“Couples in which both members had at least a four-year degree made up 14.7 percent of all married people in the U.S. in 2015, up from just 1.9 percent in 1960,” the author says.

Ambitious couples getting together enables them to “consolidate that advantage under one roof”. This can have inter-generational impacts.

The League, Raya and Sparkology are among the companies in this niche. The latter’s homepage reads: “Ladies, you asked for quality gentlemen: Men are verified grads of top universities”.

Over 30% of users on The League are Ivy League college graduates, the article notes.

A recent Intelligence Squared debate examined the sociological impacts of online dating.

The panellists disagreed on whether or not there was compelling evidence that dating apps had increased the amount of interracial couples.

Read more from Bloomberg here.