>>513403785 (OP)They can't afford it.
Correction: Human Capital Mediates Natural Selection in Contemporary Humans" by David Hugh-Jones and Abdel Abdellaoui (2022), published in Behavior Genetics (DOI: 10.1007/s10519-022-10110-1)
Figure 2
tl;dr: In a study of ~400k UK Biobank participants (mostly white British), researchers found that genetic traits related to higher 'human capital' (e.g., intelligence, education, delayed childbearing) are under negative natural selection in modern society—meaning they're linked to having fewer children on average. Traits like extraversion and height show positive selection. This is mediated by socioeconomic factors, not direct evolution, and effects are small. The paper corrects minor errors from a prior version and discusses implications for human evolution.
The paper is about natural selection in the population as a whole (both men and women), driven by reproductive outcomes (number of kids). It doesn't isolate "female choice"—reproductive success involves male choices, mutual attraction, contraception, family planning, socioeconomic factors, and random chance. The authors explicitly discuss how modern society (e.g., education delaying childbirth) mediates these effects, not just women's preferences. For example:
• Negative selection on intelligence/education applies to both sexes.
• Traits like height or extraversion might correlate with more kids, but the paper doesn't attribute this to "women seeking" them—it's a statistical correlation, not a causal claim about dating.
some traits (e.g., height, extraversion) are positively selected, while others (e.g., cognitive ability, education) are negatively selected.
