Institute for Family Studies — There's no huge gender gap in being single among young adults

What the study found

Reviewing the General Social Survey's relationship-status measure, Nicholas Wolfinger reported a young-adult gender gap in being single of roughly 10 to 25 percentage points depending on the survey year, rather than the 30-point gap implied by widely cited Pew figures. Because men date women about two years younger on average, re-running the comparison with women under 30 against men under 32 shaves an average of more than 4 percentage points off the single-men total. GSS sexual-activity data also showed minimal gender differences, suggesting that some respondents who call themselves single are in fact in relationships. ^[1]

Why it matters here

This analysis is one of the main reasons the headline figure that most young men are single is treated as partly supported rather than settled. It comes from a socially conservative think tank, yet still concludes that the gap is real but far smaller than 30 points — a notable concession that bears directly on whether 63% of young men are single. It supplies the age-band adjustment and the alternative dataset that shrink the widely recycled number without denying that young men are somewhat more likely than young women to be unpartnered.