Marriage Gains: Who Should You Marry ?

Abstract

This paper proposes a general equilibrium approach to examine the marriage market and within-household transfers. Using observations on who matches with whom, I derive information on how efficiently the market functions and on agent's preferences in terms of mate choice. I use a multidimensional search and matching model which allows people to choose their partner according to their education level, their wage and their physical attractiveness. I first estimate a gender dependent unidimensional marriage index then I implement a multidimensional matching model to allow for complementarities in characteristics of partners. In both specifications, I find that wages are more important in men's attractiveness than in women's attractiveness whereas physical characteristics and education are more important for women. Some disparities exist across age groups. The weight of wage increases over the lifetime whereas the weights of education and physical attractiveness decrease. Besides, I find that the marriage market is more efficient for young individuals who are more selective. Finally, I compute the marriage gain and the within-household transfers and show that men get in average 56% of the surplus. I also look at the effects of taxation on matching patterns. I compare individual and joint taxation of the household gain and show that joint taxation slightly improves women's share of the surplus through less sorting on characteristics on the marriage market.