Abstract:
We digitized data from matrimonial ads published in major news outlets from Canada, France and India from 1950 to 1995 to document how partner preferences have evolved over time. In the two Western countries, we show that: (i) the importance of economic criteria has fallen sharply in favour of an increase of personality traits, (ii) the desired age gap has decreased, (iii) these results are more marked for women after the 1970s. We also use cross-sectional data in 1995 from 45 regional newspapers in the US and Canada and show that personality criteria are consistently ranked as the most sought for criteria. In contrast, in India, economic criteria have remained the most prevalent criteria over time and the importance of personality traits has not increased.We provide evidence that these results are unlikely to be driven by the choice of newspapers outlets, composition effects over time, transformations of language or methodological choices. We discuss potential mechanisms and argue that these evolution reflect a hierarchy of partner preferences, whereby the demand for non-material needs rests on the satisfaction of material needs such as economic ones