Debate on international surrogacy in Norway

 In Norway, where surrogacy is illegal, there is a debate about whether surrogacy conducted legally in other countries should also be criminalized for Norwegians.

The Norwegian Broadcasting Co. (NRK) has the story (with a little help from Google translate):

Familieminister mener surrogati skal kunne være straffbart The Minister of Family Affairs believes that surrogacy should be punishable by Chris Burke Marthe  and Ingrid Tinmannsvik

"The debate about surrogacy has created debate in Norway over several years. In 2022, surrogacy is illegal in Norway.

"Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe (Sp) believes it should still be illegal to have children in this way.

...

"surrogacy in itself can be compared to human trafficking. A commercial industry where there is a great danger of exploiting vulnerable women. Shall we make children an item you can order and buy?"

...

"No one knows how many surrogate children come to Norway each year. But last year, 61 Norwegian fathers said that they became the father of a child in one of the countries it is most common to go to for surrogacy. It shows figures the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has obtained from the foreign service missions.

"About 10 years ago, the Storting passed an exemption which means that people who have children through surrogacy abroad cannot be punished.

"Tops voted against the law change and still disagrees.

...

"Anette Trettebergstuen (Labor Party), Minister of Culture and Gender Equality, reacts to Toppe's comparison of surrogacy and human trafficking.

...

"She believes a ban on punishment would not work in practice.

"- Should parents who bring a baby to the country be imprisoned? It will definitely be against the best interests of the child. And even if fines were imposed, many would probably think it was worth it", she says."

HT: Øivind Schøyen

Assortative mating plus efficient wealth management in Norway, by Fagereng, Guiso & Pistaferri

 Here's a recent NBER working paper that sheds some further light on how assortative mating leads to divergence in family wealth. (Apparently the spouse who managed pre-marital wealth better has more weight in managing the family finances...). Among other things we learn that Norwegian data on income and wealth is really good.

Assortative Mating and Wealth Inequality  by Andreas Fagereng, Luigi Guiso & Luigi Pistaferri, NBER WORKING PAPER 29903 DOI 10.3386/w29903, April 2022

We use population data on capital income and wealth holdings for Norway to measure asset positions and wealth returns before individuals marry and after the household is formed. These data allow us to establish a number of novel facts. First, individuals sort on personal wealth rather than parents' wealth. Assortative mating on own wealth dominates, and in fact renders assortative mating on parental wealth statistically insignificant. Second, people match also on their personal returns to wealth and assortative mating on returns is as strong as that on wealth. Third, post-marriage returns on family wealth are largely explained by the return of the spouse with the highest pre-marriage return. This suggests that family wealth is largely managed by the spouse with the highest potential to grow it. This is particularly true for households at the top of the wealth distribution at marriage. We use a simple analytical example to illustrate how assortative mating on wealth and returns and wealth management task allocation between spouses affect wealth inequality.

College as a Marriage Market, by Lars Kirkebøen, Edwin Leuven, Magne Mogstad

Here's a recent working paper about college and marriage in Norway:

College as a Marriage Market, by Lars Kirkebøen, Edwin Leuven, Magne Mogstad

Abstract: Recent descriptive work suggests the type of college education (field or institution) is an important but neglected pathway through which individuals sort into homogeneous marriages. These descriptive studies raise the question of why college graduates are so likely to marry someone within their own institution or field of study. One possible explanation is that individuals match on traits correlated with the choice of education, such as innate ability, tastes or family environment. Another possible explanation is that the choice of college education causally impacts whether and whom one marries, either because of search frictions or preferences for spousal education. The goal of this paper is to sort out these explanations and, by doing so, examine the role of colleges as marriage markets. Using data from Norway to address key identification and measurement challenges, we find that colleges are local marriage markets, mattering greatly for whom one marries, not because of the pre-determined traits of the admitted students but as a direct result of attending a particular institution at a given time.

 Here's a summary from the Becker-Friedman Institute:

College as a Marriage Market, by Larn Kirkebøen, Edwin Leuven, Magne Mogstad

"The context of the authors’ study is Norway’s postsecondary education system. The centralized admission process and the rich nationwide data allow them to observe not only people’s choice of college education (institution and field) and workplace, but also if and who they marry (or cohabit with), and to credibly study effects of college enrollment. The authors find the following:

"The type of postsecondary education is empirically important in explaining whom but not whether one marries. 

"Enrolling in a particular institution makes it much more likely to marry someone from that institution. These effects are especially large if individuals overlapped in college, are sizable even for those who studied a different field and are not driven by geography.

"Enrolling in a particular field increases the chances of marrying someone within the field but only insofar as the individuals attended the same institution. Enrolling in a field makes it no more likely to marry someone from other institutions with the same field. 

The effects of enrollment on educational homogamy (or marriage between people from similar backgrounds) and assortativity vary systematically across fields and institutions, and tend to larger in more selective and higher paying fields and institutions. 

Only a small part of the effect of enrollment on educational homogamy can be attributed to matches within the same workplace.

Lastly, the effects on the probability of marrying someone within their institution and field vary systematically with cohort-to-cohort variation in sex ratios within institutions and fields. This finding is at odds with the assumption in canonical matching models of large and frictionless marriage markets.

Taken together, these findings suggests that colleges are effectively local marriage markets, mattering greatly for the whom one marries, not because of the pre-determined traits of the students that are admitted but as a direct result of attending a particular institution at a given time."