What Recessions Do to Romance
Life was bleak, bleak, bleak: Soup-kitchen lines ran for blocks. Teenagers walked across the nation on foot, looking for work. Parents fashioned cardboard soles for their children's little shoes. This was the Great Depression, and Americans were suffering. But many of them did have one thing to look forward to: dating. Young people still went to movies and dances; they shared ice-cream sundaes or Coca-Colas. (They called the latter a 'Coke date.') Not everyone could manage such luxuries, Beth Bailey, a University of Kansas historian and the author of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America, told me. But for those who could, she said, the rendezvous were a 'respite from all the grimness.'
Even in this country's darkest economic times, romance has offered a little light. In the 1930s, more jobs opened up for single women; with money of their own, more could move away from family, providing newfound freedom to date, Joanna Scutts, a historian and writer, told me. Nearly a century later, a 2009 New York Times article cited online-dating companies, matchmakers, and dating-event organizers reporting a spike in interest after the 2008 financial crash. One dating-site executive claimed a similar surge had happened in 2001, during a previous economic recession. 'When you're not sure what's coming at you,' Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist then working for PerfectMatch.com, told the Times, 'love seems all the more important.'
Now, once again, people aren't sure what's coming at them. Many consumers have been rattled by the Trump administration's erratic trade policies. And although the chances of an actual recession have declined since the president eased off some of his more aggressive tariff positions, J. P. Morgan Research still estimates the possibility at 40 percent. Meanwhile, the United States is facing another kind of recession: a romance recession. Marriage rates are going down; the number of single adults is going up. Based on trends from past eras, one might expect economic unease to give the dating market a jolt. But the way people view romance has shifted dramatically since 2008. Americans today may not be as likely as they once were to seek solace in love. This time, if an economic recession is coming, it might make the romance recession even worse.
Dating has always been expensive. Going out to a restaurant or bar or movie theater costs money; getting there might require a car; taking someone home is trickier if you can't afford to not have roommates (or if your roommates are your parents). Some people still prioritize romance in rocky times—but a lot of Americans these days are letting financial anxiety deter them. In 2022, Dating.com surveyed single people about how inflation and economic uncertainty were influencing their love lives; nearly half of respondents said they'd refrained from scheduling a date in order to save money. In a 2024 poll from LendingTree, an online lending marketplace, 65 percent of participants said inflation had affected their dating life; 81 percent said they believed that dating might be easier if they had more money.
In some sense, sure, dating is easier if you have more money. But wouldn't someone with less money be more intent on finding a partner to struggle alongside?
Today, maybe not: People might want to weather the storm before searching for love. As the sociologist Andrew Cherlin has argued, marriage was once seen as a step toward adulthood; spouses strived to build a future—and a flush bank account—together. Now, more often, marriage is seen as the culmination of the maturing process: a 'trophy' earned once you've figured out everything else—including your finances.
In one recent study, researchers asked participants making different incomes how much they desired a relationship and how ready they felt for one; six months later, they checked in to see whether those subjects had started dating someone. Johanna Peetz, a psychologist at Carleton University in Ottawa who worked on the project, told me that she and her co-author thought a higher income might make single life easier and more fun—and partnership seem less necessary. In reality, the participants making the least were the ones who viewed coupledom as only a distant priority, and who were less likely to enter a relationship. They seemed to 'really want a stable base,' Peetz said, 'before they start looking for a partner.'
Something else has changed too. More people, stressed about their finances, may now see romance not as a fun distraction or a balm, but as a stressor in itself.
Economic insecurity, researchers have found, tends to make people more risk-averse. That might not affect your dating game if going out with someone doesn't feel so scary, or if you're nervous but expect that the butterflies might lead to something beautiful. Today, though, people may be more wary of letting other people in. In recent years, researchers have clocked a growing discomfort with emotional intimacy and a drop in social trust. In 1972, the first year the General Social Survey was conducted, 46 percent of participants in that poll agreed that 'most people can be trusted'; earlier this month, Pew Research Center reported that, in a poll it conducted in 2023–24, only 34 percent of people said the same.
Straight people might be especially hesitant to put themselves out there. Suspicion between men and women seems to be on the rise. The Survey Center on American Life found that from 2017 to 2023, the number of women who said they feared being sexually assaulted had increased steeply. And a lot of women, for various reasons, really are having bad romantic experiences; in a YouGov poll from February, 44 percent of men said they'd been on a 'terrible' date—while 57 percent of women said the same. Many of them might want to depend on a partner. They also might doubt that dating will yield one, at least not easily.
For young adults in particular, an economic recession could be a disaster for romance. Gen Z is, overall, a financially anxious cohort. Leading up to the 2024 election, young adults across races and party affiliations rated inflation as their top concern. In the aftermath of that election, I talked with Meghan Grace, a co-author of Generation Z: A Century in the Making, and she summarized what she sees as this group's consistent, underlying concern: 'I just want to feel safe.' That attitude applies to finances but also to romantic risk. In a 2023 survey from the dating app Hinge, more than half of Gen Z users said they'd let the fear of rejection hold them back from pursuing someone; 44 percent had 'little to no dating experience.'
Even if an actual recession doesn't hit, economic angst isn't likely to disappear soon. And the romance recession isn't likely to reverse itself either. The mood may remain, for a while, distinctly unsexy. 'Overall, I guess my message really is, Oh, you better buckle up,' Peetz told me. 'It's definitely not gonna be a dating boom.'
Being single is expensive. But no one can will a suitable partner into existence—and making romance work really can be harder with less wealth. In studies, people perform worse on cognitive-processing tasks when their funds are low: Some of their headspace seems to be occupied by worrying. 'You need cognitive resources to take the perspective of your partner, to communicate with your partner,' Peetz said, 'and to do all kinds of things that help relationship quality.'
Holding off on the slog of modern dating could mean conserving emotional and financial reserves. It could mean leaning instead on long-known loved ones and strengthening those bonds. Partnership may once have felt like a relatively safe bet in an otherwise precarious world. Now, for many people, it's just one more thing that they can't depend on.
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