Turns Out, New Yorkers Might Be Dating for Money, Not Love

If you’re swiping, chatting, or meeting up on a date somewhere in the U.S., you might want to check where you live, because according to a new nationwide study, certain states have higher concentrations of “gold diggers” than others. Divorce-coaching app SplitUp conducted the analysis, and the ranking isn’t based on gossip or hearsay.

They pulled together data looking at how many millionaires and billionaires a state has per capita, examining how often people are Googling terms like “sugar daddy,” “sugar baby,” or “marry rich”, and studying dating app behaviors, average income, cost of living, and more.

To start, Florida and Nevada are neck and neck at the very top. Both score an 8.24 out of 10 on SplitUp’s index. They lead the pack in Google Trends jumps for “sugar daddy,” “sugar baby,” and “marry rich". The volume of millionaire and billionaire households is also high in both states. (Data: Florida has ~496,971 millionaire households and 97 billionaire households; Nevada ~63,752 millionaires and 17 billionaires).

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Trailing them but hardly lagging are Texas, California, and then... New York. Here’s how those rankings shake out:

• Texas: 8.23 — barely outranked by Florida & Nevada.

• California: 8.07 — giving weight to the state’s massive wealth and high “luxury signaling.”

• New York: 8.04 — New York rounds out the top five of states with the highest gold-digger index.

So what does that mean for dating in New York? Let’s dig into the data.

What the numbers say about New York

Here’s what SplitUp’s spreadsheet reveals about New York:

• Population: ~19,997,100

• Average annual income: $80,630

• Average hourly wage: $38.76

• Average annual cost of living: $49,623

• Millionaire households: ~570,456

• Billionaire households: 135

• Google Trends year-over-year increases:
   • “Sugar Daddy” +62%
   • “Sugar Mommy” +46%
   • “Sugar Baby” +65%
   • “Marry Rich” +55%

• Consumer expenditures per household on dating services: $1.88

• Final gold-digger score: 8.04 / 10

New York also has the highest per-household spending on dating services ($1.88), meaning its residents are actively investing in dating.

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Combined with steep living costs, visible displays of wealth, and pressure to keep up status, New York emerges as a fertile environment where financial expectations can sneak into dating dynamics.

Bottom-ranked states (dating for dough, not dollars)

SplitUp also gives us the flipside: the states where people are least likely to date with dollar signs in mind. The bottom five:

• Maine (5.16)

• Wyoming (5.12)

• Montana (4.94)

• Nebraska (4.94)

• Vermont (4.38)

These states tend to have fewer ultra-wealthy residents, lower consumer spending on dating services, and slower upward trends in transactional-relationship searches. The romantic premise here? Dating is less about monetary upside and more about connection.