1a2b3c:
Your point is astonishingly easy to refute. See what I wrote above. The total numbers are irrelevant; we only care about the ones of marrying age.
The total number of frum males is NOT “roughly” the same as the number of frum females that are born 5 years later. Again, this is extremely simple math. It is either willful ignorance, horrifying lack of education, or a combination of both that allows people not to see this.
It helps nothing to look at all of klal yisroel as one group. If they’re going to be separated by ages in shidduchim, then you need to look at them as separate age groups. The leap of logic you’re taking is like saying “the number of men and women in the world is roughly equal, therefore every Chinese woman should be able to find herself an Icelandic husband with no surplus or polygamy.” Obviously, that would be a ridiculous statement. Lumping together 25 year olds and 18 year olds as one group is no less ridiculous once you think about it for more than a second.
“In other words, number of girls who develop a desire to “marry a talmid chochom” is way more than number of boys that actually succeed in becoming one!”
Eh, yes and no. Once the girls are 25+ and they’re already victims of the mathematical shidduch crisis, then they go dumpster diving for husbands. I know several cases of FFB girls who have married sort of out-there BT’s or gerim, but I have almost never seen it go the other way around, and it’s always cases where the girl is past her mid 20s. I’m by the way not trashing on marrying BTs or gerim, but the reality is that FFB men don’t feel that they ever “need” to go that route whereas the women often do.
“Neville, yes, I did not believe that this is the reason for the shidduch crisis in a discussion here a couple fo years back, then I did some math and had to eat my (metaphorical) hat. I still have the leftovers!”
Very glad to hear some people are figuring it out. Many people–as you will probably see on this thread–are going to simply refuse to do the math because they know they won’t like the conclusion.