Prevailing sexual economics belief posits that women have less sexual bargaining power as they age. But Baumeister and Vohs' 2004 Sexual Economic Theory (it's a proper name, like String Theory, even though it isn't really a theory, also like String Theory) was built on the assumption that sexual (reproductive) access is an intrinsically valued commodity, the supply of which is controlled by younger women.

But in the modern era sex is about more than procreation, and survey results show older women are not in a worse position. And if the women are bisexual or pansexual, they even have more power than men who are such.

The confounder is that the survey results are based on how they see themselves. There is no objective metric for a mating strategy.

The confidence is cool. The smoking, no. Credit: GIPHY

Using the Adultmatchmaker.com.au user base, the authors looked at a sample of 3,261 individual survey respondents who identified as heterosexual, bisexual or pansexual and were not in a committed relationship at the time of the online 2016 Australian Sex Survey. On survey results the self-perceived market value women gave themselves did not diminish with age, it increased.

"Exploring human reproduction as a resource and or tradable commodity, and how we see or perceive ourselves in the interplay of mating market dynamics is interesting research for most people. After all, we are here because our parents were successful at it," says Queensland University of Technology economist Dr. Stephen Whyte.

Who else has a great deal of confidence in their desirability, believing they command a market premium? Men with more educational qualifications.