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Study: Middle-Income Earners 69% More Likely to Go on Blind Dates

Hayley Matthews

Written by: Hayley Matthews

Hayley Matthews

Hayley has over 10 years of experience overseeing content strategy, social media engagement, and article opportunities. She has also written hundreds of informational and entertaining blog posts. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Bustle, Cosmo, the Huffington Post, AskMen, and Entrepreneur. When she's not writing about dating news, relationship advice, or her fantasy love affair with Leonardo DiCaprio, she enjoys listening to The Beatles, watching Harry Potter reruns, and drinking IPAs.

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Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

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This is an exclusive study conducted by DatingAdvice.com, which surveyed respondents over the course of three weeks to reflect an accurate representation of the U.S. population.


The power of the Internet has taken dating to a whole new level – dating sites abound while social media allows us to learn everything we need to know about our potential partner.

With this technology, one of the more traditional means of dating – the blind date – seems to have fallen to the wayside. But has it really?

In our most recent DatingAdvice.com study, we surveyed more than 1,000 Americans to see if they’ve ever been on a blind date.

Interestingly enough, middle-income earners are the most likely to have done so.

Those earning between $50,000 and $74,999 a year are an astounding 69 percent more likely than those earning less than $25,000 a year to go on a date where they’ve never seen or met the person (54 to 32 percent, respectively).

What’s the reasoning behind this?

Gary Lewandowski Jr., the chair of psychology at Monmouth University and co-creator of ScienceofRelationships.com, said one of the major influences is that income works as a proxy measure for someone’s age.

“Middle-income earners are 69 percent more
likely to go out on a blind date.”

“Those who are earning less are also younger, while those earning more are likely to be older,” he said.

Younger people in that lowest income slot may be less likely to go on blind dates because they have other options available to them, or they’re better at using those alternative options like the Internet and social media.

Since blind dating can be considered “risky,” as Lewandowski points out, “You never know what you’re going to get – younger singles may go with what they consider a ‘safer’ strategy.”

Our research results also showed older Americans (aged 65 and older) are almost three times more likely to go on a blind date than younger Americans (aged 18 to 24), supporting the correlation between age and income.

The study surveyed 1,080 respondents over the course of three weeks, balancing responses by age, gender, income, race, sexuality and other factors in order to accurately represent the U.S. population. The study has a margin of error of +/- 2.8%.

The Breakdown: 

americans-on-a-blind-date1Visit DatingAdvice.com/Studies for more research on dating and relationship topics. 

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