Personality and Marital Surplus

Shelly J Lundberg

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1645909

Abstract

This paper uses data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study to examine the relationship between psychological traits, in particular personality, and the formation and dissolution of marital and cohabiting partnerships. Changing patterns of selection into and out of relationships indicate that the determinants of marital surplus have altered between older cohorts who were born in the years after World War II and younger cohorts born in the 1960s. For younger cohorts, relationships between personality traits and the probability of marriage are identical for men and women, which is consistent with returns to marriage that are based on joint consumption. Tastes for marital public goods are negatively related to openness to experience (a desire for change and variety) and positively related to conscientiousness for both men and women. Selection into marriage is associated with distinctly different personality profiles for older men and older women, suggesting that gender-specialized contributions to household public goods were an important source of marital surplus for these cohorts.

Highlights

The formation and dissolution of marital and cohabiting relationships have important implications for individual wellbeing and for society
Using individual personality traits as indicators of heterogeneous preferences and capabilities that influence marital surplus, I show that production complementarities imply a different sorting of men and women into marriage than do consumption complementarities
The effects of individual personality traits on the marriage probabilities of men and women are quite distinct, though there are two common elements in all specifications—openness to experience decreases marriage for both men and women, while conscientiousness increases the probability of marriage

Summary

Introduction

The formation and dissolution of marital and cohabiting relationships have important implications for individual wellbeing and for society. Using individual personality traits as indicators of heterogeneous preferences and capabilities that influence marital surplus, I show that production complementarities imply a different sorting of men and women into marriage than do consumption complementarities.

Results

Conclusion