Apparently her thoughts didn’t catch on, because a decade after it was written, the intellectuals doing studies are still stating that marriage has declined due to an insufficient “basket of goods” offered by male suitors for marriage, instead of any analysis of whether the supposed demand side is realistic, or whether the female brings any “basket of goods” to the table.]/Quote]
Did you even read the article you linked to? You're the only one saying it is a "basket of goods" problem. Even the Yahoo summary doesn't say that, and neither does the study abstract. You also said "high earning", which isn't used in the article. The author of the article specifically talks about how the rise in education and earning power of women has already seen more women marrying men who earn less. I'm not going to pay for the full article, so it would be nice to see how the demographics are being analyzed and how much of a discussion there is about the usefulness of using previous matches as a predictor for the current demand.
But even if the research is sloppy or badly done, it flat out does not say "basket of goods" or "high earning" (unless you think 40k/year is "high earning"). I don't know where you got that from.
Can you imagine the backlash if an author determined that the looks of women peak in their late teens and 20s (not saying they do, just supposing a hypothesis) and marriage rates might have declined because men are relatively less inclined to pursue women in their 30s and above for marriage out of pure attraction. Therefore, the years that women spend on education, demanding first jobs, and “finding themselves” has declined the overall marriage rate, and that is a major change in society during the last few decades.
There have been lots of people who argue that. It's really common. How have you never noticed this? Yes it is mostly evopsych people who insist it is about the attractiveness only, but the whole "women working and not settling before getting settled" is what is driving the marriage rate is something you see a lot.