Is the dating recession an affordability issue?
February 11, 2026
Young Americans aren’t just struggling to buy homes — they’re struggling to go on dates. A new report from the Institute for Family Studies and The Wheatley Institute finds that only 31% of young unmarried adults who expect to marry are currently dating, while three-quarters of women (74%) and nearly two-thirds of men (64%) reported they had not dated, or dated only a few times, in the last year.
The report is based on a nationally representative sample of 5,275 unmarried young adults ages 22 to 35, but the authors excluded from the results 736 respondents who said they did not expect to ever marry. Of the remaining 4,359 respondents, about half said they were single but interested in starting a relationship, while another 30% were dating either casually or exclusively. The gender gap among those who were not in a relationship but wanted to start one was wide, however, with 60% of men not in a relationship wanting to start one, compared to just 43% of women.
