Formal organizational power → Youth / fertility preference in partners
Command over people is not a separately identified cause of youth preference. It usually arrives with money.
Observational · Low
The association does not survive the backdoor. Usually SES, outdoor time, or healthy-user bias.
Mechanism
Buss and Fisman do not randomize formal authority. Any raw power–preference link is entangled with income, age, and the rooms executives enter. Marked smoke until a design separates them.
Caveats
A clean identification would need a shock to rank that is not a shock to pay. We do not have one in the seed.
Effect
qualitative. Power and income are bundled in the folk story. The papers measure markets, not org charts.
Nodes
Named confounders
Cite this page
What Causes What. “Formal organizational power → Youth / fertility preference in partners.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-power-youth-pref (atlas updated 2026-08-31).
Papers
- Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures
D. M. Buss · 1989 · Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Gender differences in mate selection: Evidence from a speed dating experiment
R. Fisman, S. S. Iyengar, E. Kamenica, I. Simonson · 2006 · Quarterly Journal of Economics