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Summary of: Kruger, D. J. (2009). When men are scarce, good men are even harder to find: Life history, the sex ratio, and the proportion of men married. The Journal Of Social, Evolutionary, And Cultural Psychology, 3(2), 93-104. Summary by Lisa Jamar, Scott Wolfson, Melanie de la Cruz, Calvin Torng For Dr. Mills Psyc 310 class, Spring, 2014 Daniel J. Kruger’s study of the proportion of married men in adulthood is assessed based on its relationship to the operational sex ratio. Kruger hypothesized about two different variables. First, at a younger age, women would marry more often than men, but more men would be married in adulthood. This studied the relationship between age related trends and reproductive value. Second, Kruger predicted that the higher rate of marriage in male adulthood was due to men capitalizing on the low sex ratio population of prospective husbands. Modern societal values suggest this is due to the shift from mating efforts to the desire for parental investment in men. Overall, Kruger’s study assesses the relationship between the likelihood of men marrying, depending on age, and the variation in the sex ratio. In looking at this relationship, it’s important to look at the evolution of the sex ratio. On average it makes sense for each sex to have equal reproductive success due to the fact that each person has one mother and one father. However, if more of one sex is produced, then the opposite sex will have higher reproductive value. This is the way in which a stable equilibrium is reached, as selection favors the production of the rarer sex. The rarer sex is more valuable in the marriage market, but in a society in which there is high sex ratio, men outnumber women, their socioeconomic status is the biggest factor in their suitability. High sex ratios have been thought to related to the higher marriage rate in men because of the sex differences in reproductive strategies (Kruger, 94.) Hypergyny, women favor men of higher status, is further explained through the higher parental investment women make in reproduction. The woman is more selective in the process of choosing a mate because she wants more valuable resources and a mate that will stay involved. This provides the basis for which we see competition for resources and “signals of willingness to commit” in men (Kruger, 94.) Guttentag and Secord (1983) looked at how sex ratios can have an impact on mens attitude. Guttentag and Secord found that in the 1930s-1950s men were more invested in long-term relationships compared to in the 1960s-1970s when men held the attitude of love them and then leave them. They found that these attitudes resulted by how the sex ratio aligned, after the baby boom the men had a poorer attitude towards long-term relationships. When women had a low sex ratio, men would treat women very poorly and men would also be absent in the lives of their children. When women had a high sex ratio and were wanting their independence, men were more likely to be monogamous. In modern populations it is seen that in large cities the sex ratio is very low for women. This in turn causes men to be polygamous and unwilling to commit to a relationship. Men looked for short-term relationships and are emotionally unavailable to women. Women are also more likely to settle for less then they deserve when the sex ratio is low. The life history theory (LHT) explains that organisms constantly make trade-offs in allocation of resources depending on the social and ecological conditions. Studies have shown that in areas of low sex ratio, men have less of an incentive to stay in committed relationships since there are more opportunities to mate. Males have less opportunities for short term relationships with women as they age, therefore, it is predicted that males will use low sex ratio to their advantage based on age (i.e. more inclined to have short term relationship when men are young as opposed to when they get older) There is a trend that shows that females tend to marry earlier than men due to the fact that the reproductive value of females peaks at age 20. Women tend to look for males with characteristics that would signify “genetic fitness”. Men tend to marry later after they have acquired sufficient social status. A graph was created plotting the proportion of men and women where were unmarried by age across the largest cities in the Unites States. The Operational Sex Ratio (OSR) and proportion of men and women who were married was calculated. The correlation was graphed. In the results for the study, women were more likely than men to be married from the ages of 18 to 34, and men were more likely than women to be married at age 45 and above. “A maximum of 61.5% of women were married in the 35 to 44 year age group, a maximum of 73.1% of men were married in the 60 to 64 year age group” (Kruger, 99). The operational sex ratio (OSR) of the study relating to men who were married was directly related in early adulthood, but then became inversely related to of the men who were married in later adulthood. The results supported the original hypothesized statement between the sex relationship and marital results across adulthood. This shows to be consistent with modern society and also that we live in a population with serial polygyny. Young men with in low sex ratio populations are thus less likely to get married, but this reverses as men become older and are more likely to become married even with a low sex ratio. The results suggest that there is a dramatic shift in modern times to with a greater effort for mating for short-term relationships. “Men in high sex ratio populations appear to commit to marriage earlier in life, and would then signal relationship commitment and paternal investment in an attempt to retain their partners” (Kruger, 100). All in all, this study displays how the sex ratio affects marital patterns. One limitation study was the disproportionate rate of male mortality compared to the female mortality rate. Since men typically died sooner than women, their numbers of marriage in later adulthood would be skewed. “The findings clarify how age moderates the relationship between male scarcity and the male likelihood of marriage” (Kruger, 101). “In Figure 2, bars above the plane indicate a direct relationship between the OSR and the proportion of men who are married- indicating that men are more likely to be married when they are plentiful than when they are scarce. Bars below the plane indicate an inverse relationship between the OSR and the proportion of men who are marriedindicating that men are more likely to be married when they are scarce than when they are plentiful. These relationships were significant at the α = .001 level, except for the non-significant correlation in the 18-19 year age group, when fewer than 3% of men were married” (Kruger, 99).