It’s no longer news that women prefer men who are taller. In a particular study, more than half the women said they would only date a man who’s taller than them.
But, what if ladies found out that shorter men actually made better partners?
A preliminary new study suggests that shorter men might actually be better partners than their taller counterparts. Dalton Conley, a sociologist at NYU, and Abigail Weitzman, a Ph.D. candidate, used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—a University of Michigan project that’s been collecting demographic data on 5,000 families for almost 50 years. They looked at how a man’s height impacts different areas of the relationship.
They looked at two sets of data, from 1986 and 2009, and identified 3,033 heterosexual couples. They categorized the men into three groups: “Short” men were defined as 5’6” or less in 1986, 5’7” or below in 2009; “tall” men were at least 6’1” in 1986 and 6’2” in 2009.
From their findings, short men were less likely to get married. According to Wietzman, “short men may have a harder time getting married because they are viewed as less masculine”. However, short men were also less likely to get divorced, and they have a 32% lower divorce rate than their taller and average counterpart — this points to something.
Weitzman explains that women who are resistant to marrying short men would most likely opt out from the relationship before it reaches marriage stage.
“There’s something distinct about the women who marry short men.” Wietzman says. Or could it just be that the marriages of short men last because they make better partners? They do a greater share of housework: On average, they perform 8 hours and 28 minutes per week of housework—constituting about 28 percent of the total—compared to 7 hours 38 minutes for average men and 7 hours 30 minutes for tall men. And they’re more likely to be the breadwinners: Conley and Weitzman estimate that 78 percent of short men out-earn their partners, compared to 69 percent of average men and 71 percent of tall men.
Are shorter men really better partners? So ladies, who you rather date or marry a short man?
ViV