Consent-based laws and aggregate fertility
This article explores the impact of consent-based laws on fertility and sexual behavior in European countries. It finds that such legislation leads to a 4% decrease in fertility, primarily due to reduced couple formation and increased abortion rates. The study suggests that changes in risk perceptions and dating behaviors contribute to this decline.
- ▪Switching to tacit consent-based legislation reduces fertility by about 4% relative to the mean.
- ▪The decline in fertility is driven by a decrease in couple formation and an increase in abortion rates.
- ▪Contraceptive use rises among younger women but declines among older age groups.
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| Original publisher | Marginal Revolution |
| Canonical URL | https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/consent-based-laws-and-aggregate-fertility.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=consent-based-laws-and-aggregate-fertility |
| Publication time | Wed, 03 Jun 2026 05:15:17 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-03T05:21:56.567Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-03T05:21:56.567Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | oYtjd7ufoT02 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Consent-based laws and aggregate fertility by Tyler Cowen June 3, 2026 at 1:15 am in Data Source Medicine This paper examines how expanding the legal definition of sexual assault affects fertility and sexual behavior, using a panel of European countries. I find that switching to tacit consent-based legislation reduces fertility by about 4% relative to the mean. This effect is driven by a decrease in couple formation and an increase in abortion rates. Supporting evidence is consistent with a behavioral channel in which more risk-averse individuals withdraw from dating and partner markets following the reform, altering the composition of those who remain active toward a pool that is less precautionary.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Marginal Revolution.
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