Advice you can't check is just opinion with confidence. Every number on this site traces back to a named, dated source — here they are, along with the exact figures we take from each.
Pew Research Center
The backbone of our numbers on how people over 50 actually experience online dating.
Cited across our getting-started, women’s and men’s guides.
Bowling Green State Univ. — NCFMR
The population data behind our standing answer to «is there anyone even out there?». Yes — nearly three in ten people in their 50s, and the share climbs with every decade after 60.
Cited on the homepage, hubs, and most guides.
The Senior List
A late-2024 survey of older singles — the research twin of what we see in real life.
Cited in our complete guide, women’s guide, and age-gap articles.
Lee & McKinnish, Journal of Population Economics
Thirteen years of Australian household panel data — the best evidence we found on whether an age gap actually affects how a couple fares over time.
Cited in our age-gap articles, where it replaced a softer claim we could not support.
David M. Buss, Behavioral and Brain Sciences
The canonical cross-cultural study of stated age preferences — 37 samples, 33 countries, 10,047 people. We pair it with Eastwick & Finkel (2008), which found stated ideals fail to predict real attraction after meeting someone.
Cited in our age-gap articles on stated versus revealed preference.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission
The FTC’s annual report to Congress on fraud against older adults. Note what it does not contain: neither the FTC nor the FBI breaks romance-scam victims out by gender, so we do not claim scammers target women specifically.
Cited in our online dating safety guidance.
We link the study itself, not an article about an article about it. If we can’t find the original, we don’t cite the number.
A statistic without a year is folklore. Every figure we print carries its source and vintage in the same sentence.
Who was surveyed, how many, and how were they found? A self-selected poll of app users is not a picture of everyone over 50 — and we say so when it matters.
Research tells you the terrain; it doesn’t walk it for you. Where evidence is thin, we write «in our experience» and mean exactly that.
Research moves; links rot; better studies appear. Tell us at hello@over50romance.com — we'll update within a week and note the change.
Looking for the numbers themselves? Our dating-after-50 statistics page collects them, each linked to its source. Full sourcing rules live in the editorial policy; to quote us, see how to cite Over 50 Romance.