Education (and age) versus fertility in the U.S. marriage market

 Markets change over time, including the marriage market.  American marriages have become more assortative in recent years, and it appears that, in the 21st Century, women no longer pay a 'marriage penalty' (measured in spousal income) for graduate education.

The Human Capital–Reproductive Capital Trade-Off in Marriage Market Matching, by Corinne Low, Journal of Political Economy Volume 132, Number 2, February 2024

"Abstract: Throughout the twentieth century, the relationship between women’s human capital and men’s income was nonmonotonic: while college-educated women married richer spouses than high school–educated women, graduate-educated women married poorer spouses than college-educated women. This can be rationalized by a bidimensional matching framework where women’s human capital is negatively correlated with another valuable trait: fertility, or reproductive capital. Such a model predicts nonmonotonicity in income matching with a sufficiently high income distribution of men. A simulation of the model using US Census fertility and income data shows that it can also predict the recent transition to more assortative matching as desired family sizes have fallen."

Notable sentence about the ancien regime: "I provide a simple condition such that there always exists a man rich enough that he prefers a higher fertility but poorer woman to a richer and less fertile woman."

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And here's an earlier paper on fertility (through IVF) and age of marriage in Israel:

Gershoni, Naomi, and Corinne Low. 2021. "Older Yet Fairer: How Extended Reproductive Time Horizons Reshaped Marriage Patterns in Israel." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 13 (1): 198-234.

"Abstract: Israel's 1994 adoption of free in vitro fertilization (IVF) provides a natural experiment for how fertility time horizons impact women's marriage timing and other outcomes. We find a substantial increase in average age at first marriage following the policy change, using both men and Arab-Israeli women as comparison groups. This shift appears to be driven by both increased marriages by older women and younger women delaying marriage. Age at first birth also increased. Placebo and robustness checks help pinpoint IVF as the source of the change. Our findings suggest age-limited fertility materially impacts women's life timing and outcomes relative to men."

Frozen embryos are children: Alabama Supreme Court ruling

 The Washington Post has the story, which emphasizes the implications this ruling could have on in-vitro fertilization (IVF).  That would also impact surrogacy, and possibly deceased donor transplantation (depending on how it impacts the definitions of who is alive and who isn't...) 

Frozen embryos are children, Ala. high court says in unprecedented ruling. By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, February 19, 2024 

"The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that frozen embryos are people and someone can be held liable for destroying them, a decision that reproductive rights advocates say could imperil in vitro fertilization (IVF) and affect the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on treatments like it each year.

"The first-of-its-kind ruling comes as at least 11 states have broadly defined personhood as beginning at fertilization in their state laws, according to reproductive rights group Pregnancy Justice, and states nationwide mull additional abortion and reproductive restrictions, elevating the issue ahead of the 2024 elections. Federally, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide this term whether to limit access to an abortion drug, the first time the high court will rule on the subject since it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

"The Alabama case focused on whether a patient who mistakenly dropped and destroyed other couples’ frozen embryos could be held liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit. The court ruled the patient could, writing that it had long held that “unborn children are ‘children’” and that that was also true for frozen embryos, affording the fertilized eggs the same protection as babies under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

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"The push for defining personhood has even affected tax law: Georgia now recognizes an “unborn child” as a dependent after six weeks of pregnancy.