Women, IQ and Marriage

In one study, four British universities measured the IQ of 900 11-year-olds and revisited them 40 years later to see how their lives had moved on.

They found that the brighter girls were less likely to find a man who wants to marry them, with their chances diminishing dramatically in direct proportion to their level of intelligence.

For each 16-point rise in their IQ, their marriage prospects fell by 40 per cent.

In contrast, boys' chances increased by 35 per cent with each 16-point rise.  (Qtd. here).

One theory is that men want to marry women who are not as smart as they are.  I thus explained to my wife (who has a PhD in microbiology) how lucky she was to find a really smart man.  Her response was unprintable in a family blog.  Let's just say that she had an alternative theory of why smart women don't get married, something about a fish and a bicycle.