Low sex ratios are often equated with unfavorable marriage prospects for women, but in France after World War 1, the … marriage probability of single females rose 50%, despite a massive drop in the male/female ratio. We conjecture that the war …-time birth-rate bust induced an abnormal postwar abundance of singles with relatively high marriage propensities. We compute the …

By reducing the risk of unwanted parenthood, more effective contraception reduces the cost of sex outside of marriage …, increasing the value of single life. Could this explain why marriage and birth rates declined in the U.S. after 1970?. We …, modeling the shotgun-marriage, contraception- method and abortion margins. We use US survey data on contraception, sexual …