Assortative mating in the online market for sperm donation
详细信息 查看全文
- 作者：Stephen Whyte ; Benno Torgler
- 关键词：Assortative mating ; Matching ; Online sperm donor market ; Preferences ; Mate choice ; Reproduction
- 刊名：Journal of Bioeconomics
- 出版年：2016
- 出版时间：October 2016
- 年：2016
- 卷：18
- 期：3
- 页码：169-194
- 全文大小：491 KB
- 刊物类别：Business and Economics
- 刊物主题：Economics
Environmental Economics
Behavioural Sciences
Economic Theory
Political Science
Law and Economics - 出版者：Springer Netherlands
- ISSN：1573-6989
- 卷排序：18
文摘
Previous studies on assortative mating have struggled to isolate preferences from actual constraints faced throughout the matching process, including the geographic and social propinquity that limit the availability of possible mates. Because such passive factors restrict the possibility set of potential partners, they may either restrict the chance of fulfilling mating preferences or lead to a high level of positive assortative mating. The possibility set may be further reduced by competition in the mating market. It is also unclear from couple’s data how much assortative mating is driven by partner selection to reduce anticipated child rearing problem and how much by a desire for parental assistance and altruistic preferences for offspring. Adopting the online market for sperm donation as the research setting reduces such problems: the more controlled setting ensures isolation of a male’s genetic impact on his offspring from other factors. By identifying the factors that influence the symmetry of characteristics between recipients and partners and recipients and donors chosen, we provide empirical evidence that even with limited constraints on available choice, women still exhibit homogamous donor preferences. Likewise, by exploring how potential donors’ characteristics match partner characteristics, we offer insights into what drives recipients’ desires to find donors who surpass both their own and their partners’ characteristics.