A new Pew Research Center study finds that American men who remarry are more likely to choose spouses who are significantly younger.
Remarriage, as we reported recently, is on the rise, with 40 percent of new marriages involving at least one partner who has been married before, and 20 percent involving partners who’ve both been previously married.
A look at the ages of those remarried couples reveals that 20 percent of the husbands have wives who are at least 10 years younger than they are. Another 18 percent are remarried to women six to nine years younger.
The findings, based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, focused only on opposite-sex couples who remarried in 2013.
Eighty percent of men enter first marriages with spouses who are within five years of their age, according to the study. But that number dips to 57 percent for remarried men.
Meanwhile, just 5 percent of remarried women are partnered with husbands who are 10 years their junior, and 6 percent of wives choose second husbands who are six to nine years younger.
There’s probably an explanation for this behavior, no doubt steeped in both evolutionary psychology and cultural relativism. But I kind of like Ursula Burns’ theory.
Burns is the head honcho at Xerox, where she started as an intern and went on to become the first African-American woman CEO to head a Fortune 500 company. She met her husband, Lloyd Bean, who is 20 years older than she is, at Xerox.
“The age difference proved advantageous when Burns’ job later required her to travel frequently and leave their two young children at home,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “Her husband retired, allowing Burns to focus on advancing her career.”
