Gender norm conflict and marital outcomes

Francisca M Antman,Priti Kalsi,Soohyung Lee

doi:10.1017/dem.2021.7

Abstract

AbstractWe investigate the impact of male–female conflict over gender norms on marital outcomes. As marriage requires mutual agreement regarding the role of husband and wife, we hypothesize that a person who is less likely to encounter a potential mate with similar gender norms will face a lower chance of marrying. Even if two parties marry despite a difference in gender norms, their marriage may be more vulnerable to external shocks, making divorce more likely relative to their counterparts without gender norm conflict. Finally, we predict that in the presence of gender norm conflict, high-skilled individuals may be less likely to get or stay married relative to low-skilled individuals, as the former group faces better outside options. Estimates from an analysis of U.S. marriage markets differentiated by birth cohort, state, race, and skill level support our theoretical predictions. Additional extensions explore heterogeneous effects and additional outcomes such as the presence of children in the household.

Highlights

One of the most striking demographic changes in the United States in recent years has been the well-documented decline in marriage rates across cohorts over time
Our main results suggest that a one standard deviation increase in gender norm conflict is associated with a drop in marriage rates of about 2.4% for men and 2.9% for women
Heterogeneity analysis indicates gender norm conflict has even greater impacts in skilled marriage markets where it is associated with even lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates, suggesting greater marriage market penalties associated with gender norm conflict for skilled men and women

Summary

Introduction

One of the most striking demographic changes in the United States in recent years has been the well-documented decline in marriage rates across cohorts over time. While several explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, one of the more salient economic rationales is rooted in increased opportunities for women which have themselves been facilitated by changing norms surrounding the role of men and women in society [Bertrand et al (2018)] We build on this literature by exploring an innovative view of gender conflict that measures disagreement over the roles of men and women within marriage. We ask: To what extent can dissimilar notions of marriage between men and women, as measured by the probability of agreement with a To address this question, we set up a simple model closely following Bertrand et al (2018) where gender norms help to determine the net benefit of marriage over and above remaining single, individuals are matched randomly within marriage markets, and gender norms are exogenously given.

Background and intuition

Extensions

Data and descriptive statistics

Empirical strategy

Main results

Conclusion