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A paper published today argues that women's liberation led to collapsing fertility around the world.

Using US data, the authors show 58% of women's sɛҳuąƖ relationships are with the most promiscuous 10% of men.

But most of these relationships are short term and childless

Women's freedom, widely viewed as positive around the world, is strongly associated with lower fertility, the authors find (r=.81).

Many forces have led women to pursue short-term rather than long-term mating strategies. But most of these partnerships don't lead to kids.

In US data over the past decade, a tenth of men accounted for 60% of female sɛҳuąƖ partnerships.

The obvious problem is that most women will not be able to have a long-term relationship with these few men and so end up single.

But instead of arguing for a return of social norms around marriage, the authors say that the solution to the fertility crisis lies in "further marginalization of men" (yes, that's in the title!) and getting single women to have more kids.

Out of curiosity, I plot female version of it from 2014-2024 GSS. It turns out the distribution doesn’t differ much from male one. Considering GSS has smaller sample size issue, so it’s not surprising such sex difference for top 20% is lather in GSS than in NSFG which

Similarly distribution means actual mating pattern resembles right one than left one.

Because this mating pattern looks like right one instead of left one if both top promiscuous men and women could get large share of sɛҳuąƖ partners. This does not constitute harem effect.

Because that’s just one side of story, NSFG has 10x sample size, if you only look into sɛҳuąƖ partners in men, well you will get a story that 20% men monopolize 80% women, but if you consider both side of story, then there is little room for Chadharem narrative.

Let’s not forget STD datas also don’t support chadharem narrative.

STD datas also show female std rate is parallel to male one, if Chadharem exists, then female one will rise disproportionately compared to male one. (Why female std rate is higher, because std test primarily screen young women, and female biological structure makes them more