Economics of Love in Dating Apps: Do You Love Me Just Because We Are The Same?

From this, we can clearly see that it's getting harder for people to socially mobilize through marriages because people are simply more gravitated towards those similar to them and these apps surely help them to make it comes true. More divorces are also reported to be increasing for the less well-off couples and in contrast, the divorce rates are decreasing continuously for the opposite since 1980.

So, what does it indicate for us? Do we have to blame ourselves for choosing someone that's similar to us in dating apps thus resulting in bigger disparities?

These dating apps show that they actually work exactly like what we used to do when we choose our partners in real life, but in a more sophisticated form. Through its feature to find people from similar socioeconomic background, these dating apps hope that they can make more matches. But inadvertently, this leads to more inequality in economy -- and these apps do little or might as well none to prevent and resolve it. In reality, they may actually accelerate it. Perhaps, government can somehow see it as a chance to fix the economic gap by increasing the marginal tax, so that the extra tax that richer households have to pay is increased. But it's going to have to be justified further.

In the end, it is as clear as glass that love is a scarce resource: it requires sacrifice to get it and also to maintain it in order for us to acquire a fruitful result and not wasting it. Also because of its scarcity, we have to bear a 'cost' coming from the ownership of the resource, which here takes in the form of inequality.

Oleh Sendy Jasmine Karunia Hadi - Ilmu Ekonomi 2017 - Staff Kajian Kanopi 2018