Diplomatic Relations
Make It or Break It? Pregnancy Scares and Romantic Relationship Dissolution
Lauren Newmyer & Scott Yabiku
Demography, February 2025, Pages 291-310
Abstract:
Young adult romantic relationships have undergone significant changes in recent decades, resulting in such distinct demographic trends as rising rates of relationship dissolution. Union dissolution during young adulthood can influence future relationship stability, financial well-being, and health. Reproductive experiences are an important factor that can shape relationship stability. Much of past research, however, has focused on the impact of childbearing on relationship stability while less attention has been paid to other reproductive experiences that could also shape relationship stability, such as pregnancy scares. A pregnancy scare is when a woman suspects she has an undesired pregnancy but later discovers she is not pregnant. This experience might increase or decrease relationship stability. Drawing on data collected from young women in the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study, this analysis examines the association between pregnancy scares and union dissolution. Results suggest that pregnancy scares are negatively associated with union dissolution, and this relationship persists over time; however, this association varies by relationship type, with serious dating relationships experiencing the most protective benefits.
Bachelors Without Bachelor's: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates
Clara Chambers, Benny Goldman & Joseph Winkelmann
Harvard Working Paper, January 2025
Abstract:
Over the past half-century, the share of men enrolled in college has steadily declined relative to women. Today, 1.6 million more women than men attend four-year colleges in the U.S. This trend has not lowered marriage rates for college women, a substantial share of whom have historically married economically stable men without college degrees. Both historical evidence and cross-area comparisons suggest that worsening male outcomes primarily undermine the marriage prospects of non-college women. The gap in marriage rates between college-and non-college women is more than 50% smaller in areas where men have the lowest rates of joblessness and incarceration.
Singleness and the Pandemic Dating Recession
Michael Rosenfeld
Journal of Family Issues, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Coronavirus pandemic in the US represented a fundamental challenge to casual dating and to romantic relationship formation. The How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) data for 2017-2022 show that the rate of singleness among US adults rose from 18.9% in 2017 to 24.3% in 2022 (or higher after adjusting for age), implying that more than 10 million more US adults were single during the pandemic in 2022 compared to 2017. HCMST data show that the difficulty in forming new relationships during the pandemic seems to explain most of the rise in pandemic singleness. Young adults were especially affected by the pandemic dating recession. The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines did not ameliorate the pandemic dating recession; on the contrary, vaccinated adults were more likely to describe barriers to dating in 2022. The rise in singlehood during the pandemic has been under-appreciated because our official data sources focus primarily on marriage and cohabitation, leaving casual and informal romantic relationships understudied. The lack of data on casual romantic relationships in the US has led to a lack of appreciation for the potential vulnerability of casual relationships to external shocks such as a pandemic.
Suddenly Married: Joint Taxation and the Labor Supply of Same-Sex Married Couples after United States v. Windsor
Elliott Isaac
Journal of Human Resources, January 2025, Pages 1-36
Abstract:
Joint taxation can exacerbate the deadweight loss of taxation due to labor supply responses, but evidence is scarce. I estimate the labor supply effects and efficiency costs of joint taxation in the United States by leveraging tax variation created by federal same-sex marriage recognition following the 2013 United States v. Windsor Supreme Court ruling. I estimate significant compensated elasticities along the extensive, but not intensive, margin among both higher and lower earners. My findings suggest that joint taxation is less efficient and generates less tax revenue than individual taxation and that lowering tax rates for secondary earners could improve efficiency.
No gender differences in attraction to young partners: A study of 4500 blind dates
Paul Eastwick et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 4 February 2025
Abstract:
In mixed-gender couples, men are older than women on average. Scholars and laypeople presume that this arrangement reflects mirrored preferences such that men desire younger partners and women desire older partners. Nevertheless, relevant published data on in-person romantic evaluations -- that is, studies where adults interact in person and report their initial attraction to each other -- are nearly nonexistent. We examined the association of a partner's age with romantic desire (N = 9,084 dyadic reports) among N = 6,262 blind daters who used a matchmaking service in hopes of finding a long-term partner. Preregistered tests revealed that people were (slightly) attracted to younger partners on average -- and this association did not differ by gender. Conclusions were identical if we examined a) age difference from one's own age, and b) a dataset limited to women 40-and-under and mixed-gender dates. Furthermore, participant's self-reported "upper-age limits" played no meaningful role: Participants had a modest preference for youth overall, but it did not matter whether the partner's age fell below or above this personal maximum. We discuss the implications of the nonexistent initial-attraction gender difference for the age difference in mixed-gender couples.
Patterns in affect and personality states across the menstrual cycle
Julia Stern, Peter Koval & Khandis Blake
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Affective, behavioral, and cognitive (i.e., personality) states fluctuate across situations and context, yet the biological mechanisms regulating them remain unclear. Here, we report two large, longitudinal studies that investigate patterns of change in personality states and affect as a function of the menstrual cycle, ovarian hormones, and hormonal contraceptive use. Study 1 (N = 757) is an online diary study with a worldwide sample, whereas Study 2 (N = 257) is a laboratory study including repeated hormone assays. Both studies came to somewhat diverging conclusions. In Study 1, we found that dynamics of daily affect and personality were very similar among naturally cycling women and hormonal contraceptive users, with two exceptions: Hormonal contraceptive users showed greater variability in negative affect than naturally cycling women, and, naturally cycling women showed a descriptive, but nonsignificant decrease in positive affect in the premenstrual phase. Results of Study 2 indicated robust premenstrual increases in neuroticism and negative affect but decreases in extraversion and positive affect. High extraversion and low neuroticism were positively related to conception risk and the estradiol-to-progesterone ratio, suggesting potentially adaptive effects consistent with a fertility-induced shift in motivational priorities. We discuss how differences in methods likely account for differences in results between both studies and suggest methodological and theoretical guidelines for future research. Taken together, our results suggest that hormonal variation across the menstrual cycle -- and discrete menstrual cycle events, such as premenstruation -- represent potential biological sources of personality state variation.