In Marriage, Short Guys Keep the Girl

New research shows they get divorced at vastly lower rates
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 31, 2014 1:47 PM CDT
In Marriage, Short Guys Keep the Girl
Seth Green, left, and wife Clare Grant arrive at the 2014 Creative Arts Emmys at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE on Saturday, Aug. 16, 2014, in Los Angeles. Green is 5-foot-4.   (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

The short guy doesn't always get the girl, but when he does, he usually gets to keep her. So says a new study in the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that short guys, defined as those shorter than 5-foot-7, are about 18% less likely to marry than their taller counterparts, but when they do, they divorce at lower rates—to the tune of 32% lower, reports the New Republic. Divorce rates for tall and average guys, meanwhile, are basically the same.

"This probably means that women who don't want to be in a relationship with short men are more likely to leave before they get married, rather than after," one researcher tells the Washington Post. Or more simply: "There’s something distinct about the women who marry short men." But it's not quite clear what's distinct, because shorter men appear to be the heavyweights in the relationship: Their partners tend to be younger, less educated women, who earn less than they do. Some 78% of short men out-earn their partners, as opposed to 69% of average and 71% of tall men. (More egalitarian marriages, meanwhile, often involve less sex.)

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