New research that says thanks to the Internet, marriage Rates among young people, which have been declining for years, are 15% to 30% higher than they would be without the Web. The author of the research, Andriana Bellou, says that while previous studies have suggested a correlation between the Internet and the marriage market, her paper goes further, providing 'pretty convincing' evidence 'that it's a causal effect.' Ms. Bellou, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Montreal, set out her findings in ' The Impact of Internet Diffusion on Marriage Rates: Evidence from the Broadband Market,' a paper for the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn. She studied U.S. data from roughly 1990 to 2006 on the marital status of individuals between 21 and 30 years old from the Current Population Survey, along with Federal Communications Commission reports on the spread of broadband. She found marriage rates were slightly higher among college-educated individuals than those without college degrees. 'In recent decades, we have observed important transformations in the marriage market,' Ms. Bellou said. For one thing, more young people are seeking marriage partners on the Internet, and relying less on family and friends for such introductions. The Internet's effect on the marriage market could be just as transformative as its effect on matching employers and job-seekers, Ms. Ballou said, given 'access to an expanding set of potential partners,' while preserving 'a degree of anonymity' for the searcher. But those very characteristics also could undermine the strength of Internet-made matches. 'If the Internet indeed makes meeting people easier at all times and ages then one might consider entering a marriage less thoughtfully to begin with,' she said. 'This would imply more marriages and remarriages but also more divorces. If, on the other hand, the Internet allows matching between more compatible people, one would expect divorce rates to decrease. More research is required to disentangle these effects.' 一项新的研究称，正是由于互联网的出现，年轻人的结婚率相比没有网络的时代高出了15%至30%。多年来年轻人结婚率一直呈下降趋势。 这项研究的作者贝卢(Andriana Bellou)说，虽然以往的研究表明互联网和婚姻市场之间存在相关性。但她的论文更进一步，提供了“相当有说服力的”证据表明二者间存在“因果关系”。 蒙特利尔大学(University of Montreal)经济学助理教授贝卢在一篇名为《互联网扩散对结婚率的影响：从宽带市场得到的证据》(The Impact of Internet Diffusion on Marriage Rates: Evidence from the Broadband Market)的论文中阐明了她的发现。这篇论文是为波恩的研究机构劳动研究所(Institute for the Study of Labor)所写的。她研究了来自《当期人口调查》(Current Population Survey)的数据，内容是美国大约从1990年到2006年21岁到30岁之间的人的婚姻状况，还研究了联邦通讯委员会(Federal Communications Commission)有关带宽普及方面的报告。他发现，相比没有大学学位的人，那些接受过大学教育的人结婚率要稍微高一点。 贝卢说，我们发现，最近这几十年婚姻市场出现了重要的变化。其中之一就是，有更多的年轻人在网上寻找婚姻伴侣，更少依靠家人和朋友的介绍。 贝卢说，互联网对婚姻市场的影响可能与其对雇主和求职者相匹配的影响具有同样的转型意义，即能让求偶者获得更多的潜在婚姻对象，也能让搜索者在一定程度上保持匿名。不过，这些特征也可能影响到网络促成的婚姻的坚实程度。 她说，如果说互联网的确让人们在任何时候、任何年龄遇到意中人变得容易，那么或许有人会较为轻易地就开始一段婚姻关系；这不仅意味著有更多人结婚、再婚，也意味著有更多人离婚；如果互联网让更加相投的人走到一起，那么人们可能认为，离婚率会有所下降；要想把这些互相纠缠在一起的效应分离出来，需要做更多的研究工作。
