What’s the difference between Oxfam and the Tinder dating app?  One concerns itself with issues of equality and fairness across swathes of the world’s population; the other is a charitable organisation set up in Oxford by the Quakers in 1942.

While Oxfam has just released a report on global inequality, I found my attention this week drawn ineluctably to another study highlighting gross unfairness and inequality in our world.

It is a study analysing the socio-economic prospects of males using Tinder based on the percentage of females who “like” them. For the uninitiated, Tinder is a dating app (so I am told) whereby users select possible partners by scrolling through a series of photos and selecting the one or ones they prefer.

To “like” someone on Tinder you swipe right on their photo. Swiping left would appear to be the equivalent of excusing yourself during a date on a bathroom pretext and then running, screaming, for the door.

In the Tinder economy where the currency is “likes” and the sole commodity is the degree of empirical physical attractiveness that one possesses, the news is depressingly familiar for most men. The study found that the bottom 80% of men are competing for the bottom 22% of women. The top 20% of men are sought by the top 78% of women.

The study reported that a man of average attractiveness would be liked by only 1 in 115 women. The Gini coefficient measuring inequality showed Tinder to have more inequality than is present in 95% of the world’s economies.

There are several possible messages here:

First, the Tinder economy is a cruel and unforgiving place for men. Don’t go there. Better to go to a bar with at least 115 women and walk around a lot.

Secondly, women are more discriminating than men, have wider interests and higher interest thresholds. Who knew!

Thirdly, a tip for the desperately dateless average guy. Use someone else’s photo (Google “ridiculously good looking guy” and copy an image from the fifth page of search results so as not to be too obvious, just don’t be Ben Stiller) and then agree to meet only in dimly lit bars, or even better, pitch black restaurants.

Finally, perhaps, some economists have too much spare time. They should get out more.