Most couples are close in age, and the famous cougar trend may be a myth
In about a third of American married couples, husband and wife are within two years of each other. When there is a gap, it usually runs one way: husbands two to three years older outnumber the reverse nearly three to one. A 2010 British study went further and called the much-hyped cougar trend a myth.
The 2017 US Current Population Survey offers a clear snapshot of heterosexual marriages. Some 33.9 percent of couples were within two years of each other. The husband was two to three years older in 19.6 percent, against 6.9 percent where the wife was; husbands six to nine years older made up 11.2 percent, wives with that lead just 2.8 percent. Australia and the United Kingdom show similar patterns. Typical gaps are about three years in the UK, two and a half in the US and two to three in Spain, and they are widest in Africa.
Same-sex couples spread across a broader range. According to Census Bureau figures released in August 2023, 24 percent had a gap of two years or less, while 15 percent differed by 10 to 19 years and 5 percent by 20 or more. The agency also found that men with same-sex partners average larger gaps than either women in same-sex unions or people with opposite-sex partners.
Explanations compete. A rational-choice view holds that people seek providers, and since men's earnings tend to rise with age, older men are favoured. Demographic accounts point to sex ratios, migration and shortages of marriageable partners. A 1986 Brown University study concluded that a country's social structure shapes spousal age differences more than anything else. Evolutionary theories trace preferences back to Darwin's sexual selection and to parental investment, the idea that mate choice tracks reproductive potential. Oddly, although cultures that prize children tend to have bigger gaps, Canadian research found age-disparate couples less likely to have children.
Patterns are shifting. Britain's Office for National Statistics reported in 2003 that between 1963 and 1998, brides in England and Wales who wed a younger man went from 15 percent of the total to 26 percent, and later marriage and more remarriage have widened gaps generally. Whether a big gap raises divorce risk is disputed: one study found higher rates as differences grew, while a 2008 study found no significant effect.
Source: Age disparity in sexual relationships
