Noah's Arc 2024 Q3 Newsletter
How Politics Is Affecting Gen Z Dating
Executive Summary
It’s Election Season
This election season, the political divide feels deeper than ever. Beyond noise in the media, I’m more concerned about how this polarization is affecting the lives of Gen Z.
Background
Men's workforce participation has dropped, while women's has surged, with women now leading in education and white-collar jobs. Post-COVID, this gap has widened, setting men and women on increasingly different paths.
Political Views of Younger Men and Women Are Widening
Polling shows younger women are moving left, while younger men are becoming more conservative. Issues like women’s rights and the economy are driving this political split, creating a growing divide.
Dating Apps Fuel Polarization
Dating apps are making the political divide worse. Gen Z singles often see political views as deal-breakers, and this has led to fewer matches, more frustration, and burnout in the dating scene.
Wealth Inequality from Dating Patterns
People are dating within their socioeconomic class more than ever, which is widening wealth inequality. When couples share similar financial backgrounds, it amplifies economic outcomes over time.
Who Benefits from This Trend
As Gen Z drifts away from dating apps, companies like Meta benefit. Their AI-driven platforms are reinforcing social connections based on interests, further fracturing our society.
Conclusion
The political polarization we're seeing is shaping life outcomes, especially for Gen Z. It’s up to us to find ways to talk and listen to someone we disagree with.
It’s Election Season
It’s election season here in America. The once in every 4 year cycle of relentless attack ads on TV, coupled by roughly ½ of the country increasingly disliking the outcome of the election (its oscillated which side over the last 8 years) has clearly divided us.
Pick any partisan and they’ll tell you this is ‘the most important election ever and if [insert candidate here] doesn’t win our country will be forever changed.’
Frankly, I don’t buy that. Over the long run, the US has done well under both Democrat and Republican presidents. I do not think one election will make the difference.
For those of you who have been reading this newsletter for the last 3 (almost 4 years) you’ll notice this is the first newsletter I’ve written heading into a presidential election. I’m not going to try to guess the outcome (betting markets say it's about a 50/50 chance of either candidate at this point). Rather, I want to talk about some of the damaging things that are going on under the surface as our country has become so divided.
Specifically, I want to talk about how life outcomes for men and women in GenZ (anyone born 1997-2012) are diverging.
I think this election will hinge on how men of all ages and ethnicities turn out and vote.
Younger men and women are increasingly living different life outcomes in the US, especially post COVID. This will be the marquee effect of our political division. Because, while candidates bickering on TV and attack ads (beforehand) lead to largely just unpleasant thanksgiving conversations, there is evidence now that the political divide is leading to differing life outcomes.
And that affects us all.
Background
While the trend is not new, workforce participation rates among men and women have diverged over the last 25 years.
Since 2000, the workforce participation rate among men ages 25-34 has dropped from roughly 95% down to the high 80s while workforce participation among women is now up to 78%.
Women now represent roughly 60% of the college graduates from traditional 4 year undergrad universities. Women now make up a much higher percentage of the high earning, white collar workforce than in previous generations.
To be clear: it’s amazing that women over the last couple decades have been able to see such a strong increase in labor force participation and bump in income as more women go to college and get white collar, high paying jobs.
It's a bad thing that men are not keeping up (and that labor force participation is going in the opposite direction). On the whole, about 700,000 less men ages 25-34 in the workforce than what would be expected with the size of our generation.
There are whole studies from sociologists discussing why this is happening. A big reason has been COVID, which caused this labor force participation to drop. The Wall Street Journal by sheer chance had a great piece on the topic this weekend. I highly recommend you read it.
In essence, their research has shown that men fell behind during COVID as online learning, less in person social activities and less in person work opportunities made men ‘miss’ critical milestones in life (graduate college, first full-time job, etc).
Political Views Of Younger Men And Women Are Diverging
We’re really starting to see this in the polling this election cycle. Again, the Wall Street Journal had another fascinating piece on this.
Recent research studies show that younger men and women specifically are now more polarized on political issues. Women have increasingly shifted toward liberal or progressive stances, whereas men were more stable or now lean more rightward.
A September 2024 poll by the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics showed that young females have expressed their support for Vice President Kamala Harris by a margin of 47 points.
The New York Times, in polling done in many of the battleground states, confirmed this as well in August. In essence, the median GenZ woman is going to vote for Harris (by a wide margin). The median young male is going to vote for Trump (still by a double digit margin). Younger men voted for Biden by 3 points in 2020.
While these results are from swing states, these are the states that will tip the election.
Another poll by USA TODAY and Suffolk University showed that while female voters are siding with Harris 56%-39% against former President Donald Trump, male voters prefer Trump 53%-41% on the other hand.
“Among young voters, the gap is even wider. A nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll this month found Harris leading female voters ages 18 to 34 years old 63%-27% and Trump leading male voters in the same age bracket 45%-37%.” -USA Today.
In a lot of ways this is aligning with the economic and important life milestone realities of each group. Younger men are rating the economy and immigration as their top two issues this election cycle (by a wide margin).
For younger women? Its abortion, given the Dobbs ruling 2 years ago and because many of the key milestones for younger women (graduating college/trade school, getting a job, moving out, etc.) are happening at a much higher rate.
Dating Apps Fuel Polarization
I think it's becoming apparent that younger men and women are increasingly viewing life after highschool from particularly different vantage points.
Where I think all of this comes together is in one of the single most important ‘milestones’ for younger men and women: dating. Dating apps are actually helping to make this political divide worse, and promote more frustration from people in the dating pool.
Politics is (more than it was before) turning into a deal breaker for GenZ dating and is increasingly used as a filter for who people (both men and women) chose to ‘swipe right’ on. I say this as someone who saw this for 2 years until I met my girlfriend, Megan.
So when the median male ages 18-34 is going to vote for Trump and the median female ages 18-34 is going to vote for Harris, it means the overlap of people that don’t fail at the first test (the political deal-breaker) is small.
This is not the whole story, but it's partly why dating is becoming far less common among GenZ than previous generations. Bloomberg calls the overall slump in dating the “Dating Recession” with an estimated extra 13 million Americans that are single.
Wealth Inequality From Dating Patterns
So with less Americans dating than before, the remaining group is dating more often among people who share a similar socioeconomic status as each other (they make roughly the same amount of money as one-another).
What’s powering this is online dating. One recent study from the Federal Reserve found that online dating has accounted for roughly ½ of the increase in wealth inequality in the US since 1980.
When dating moved online, this meant men and women could filter options based on education and, (on some websites) by financial security. Two financially secure people marrying has a long run compound effect on their net worth. Two financially insecure people marrying has the opposite effect. Dating groups are becoming more bimodal and politically divided.
While everyone is free (and obviously should be free) to date and marry the person they want to, the bifurcation of the dating pool means social and financial safety nets for some groups of Americans are shrinking.
For some groups (particularly for GenZ) the whole process is frozen. Young men who feel left and are not hitting their ‘milestones’ and the dating pool is smaller. This clearly affects young women too.
Young men feel like they are being left behind and are now more polarized in one direction. Women are polarized in the other direction. Nobody wins from this.
Who Benefits From This Trend
Here’s what’s interesting from all of this. While young men are not hitting the milestones they’re supposed to be hitting, they have roughly 20% more time spent alone per day than women their same age.
What does anyone my age do with extra alone time?* They hop on TikTok. They hop on Instagram.
Now, with TikTok sitting on shaky legal ground in the US and the real possibility emerging that the app is going to get banned, there’s only one company that is really convex to this trend.
It’s Meta.
Because while dating apps seem like the obvious winner (as people search for the just right person), many in GenZ are simply giving up and deleting their dating apps.
*this is a broad generalization (some people make great use of their free time) but the data backs up the general trend.
Personal Update & Conclusion
I’m sure its a little weird reading a sociology writeup on polarization & dating from a Substack you planned on getting stock analysis from.
My point from pulling this research together is that, increasingly, I think trends like polarization are affecting the country we live in (and the stocks we own too).
This type of research has been a big focus for me this year at Noah’s Arc (now 9 months into my first year of running the fund by myself).
My goal is to provide the people who reading my writing unique research that’s valuable and worth their time. I’m also writing this to help make my investing analysis better and force me to look for new trends that could affect the market.
To my investors: the good news is this process is working and better results are starting to show up in the fund.
I always have room to improve, however.
So, I’m not writing this as some sort of pessimistic analysis, rather I am saying that we are now starting to see the massive effects of partisan divide in the US and this is going to impact the stocks many of us likely own.
Young males increasingly feel left out (really not due to political factors) and are now more conservative than before.
Females are the opposite.
I think what’s key about this election season (like most of the recent cycles) is that neither major party candidate has a solution to bridge this divide.
We need people to start trusting each other again. That’s really the core of this.
In places like New York, many people are joining run clubs so they can meet that special person or just meet new friends. People who are dating, married, or are just there to meet friends wear white.
People who are single wear black.
At these run clubs:
There are no phones.
No dating apps.
No politics.
Just talking with one another.
Till next time, who’s someone you disagree with politically you can talk to?
-Noah