Men Shortage Stereotype and its Influence on Female Marriage Prospects Optimism and Pre-marital Investments

Abstract Well-known song in Soviet Union with following lyrics: “For ten girls there are just nine boys” was reflecting the situation of gender imbalance which was observed in the country. Although current Russian statistics does not confirm imbalanced sex ratio among people younger than 35 years old, there is some evidence that this belief exists among Russian women. According to Lafortune (2013) when men are in short supply, women are investing more than men premaritally even when the returns are lower or the costs are higher for them. So we hypothesize that the more women believe that there are few appropriate partners the more they engage in premarital investments. There is not enough background how optimism in this particular situation moderates the relationship: men shortage stereotype and pre-marital investments. That is why we set the research question: How marital prospect optimism affects relationships between men shortage belief and premarital investments? This research had two stages: in-depth interviews aimed to explore what kind of premarital investments women in Russia do and an online survey to test our hypothesis. The results were consisted with our hypothesis however not with all the types of premarital investments. We discovered that marriage prospect optimism has the enhancing effect on the relationship between men shortage stereotype and amount of premarital investments. Further research directions and implications are discussed.