Marriage Market Research Articles

Echoes of Emerson: Rethinking Realism in Twain, James, Wharton, and Cather

Echoes of Emerson: Rethinking Realism in Twain, James, Wharton, and Cather

An Investigation of Socio-Economic Incentives and Implications of Matrimony on Women’s Lives in Jane Austen’s Novels

Bu makale, ünlü İngiliz edebiyatı romancısı Jane Austen'ın (1775-1817) Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion ve Emma başlıklı romanlarında on dokuzuncu yüzyılın başında İngiliz toplumunda yaşayan kadınlar için evlilik kurumunun sosyo-ekonomik boyuttaki özendiriciliğine ve hayatlarındaki olası etkilerine ışık tutacak kapsamlı bir araştırma yapar. Toplumun ve insanların titiz bir gözlemcisi olarak, Austen'ın orta sınıftan sıradan bireylerin günlük yaşantısını tasvir etmedeki yeteneği, yani dönemin moda edebi yönelimi olan romantik melodramların dışına çıkarak ev-içi gerçekçiliğe odaklanması, eserlerini on dokuzuncu yüzyılın başlarındaki İngiliz kültürü ve toplumu hakkında paha biçilmez bir tarihi kaynak haline getirir. Austen'ın anlatımına egemen olan bu önemli meselelerden biri de evliliktir. Kırkbir yaşındaki ölümüne kadar bekar kalan Austen'ın, romanlarında evlilik konusuna bu kadar yoğunlaşması ve evlilik kurumunu çerçeveleyen toplumsal gerçekleri, özellikle de evliliğin kadın hayatındaki sosyal ve finansal getirilerini dikkatli gözlemleriyle sunması bakımından, yazarın toplumsal gerçekler konusundaki tanımlayıcı ustalığına işaret eder. Evli bir İngiliz kadınının kanun önünde mülkiyet ve yasal haklarını kocasının velayeti altına bırakmaya zorlayan resmi uygulama olan, coverture’ e tabi tutulması sebebiyle erkeklerin kadınlar üzerindeki ataerkil egemenliğini sağlamlaştırılmasına rağmen, evlilik kadınların kamusal varlığının ev içine indirgendiği bir ortamda, orta sınıf erkeklere kısmen sunulan kariyer ve mali gelişme şansından da mahrum olmaları sebebiyle, kadınların mali durumu ve toplumsal sınıfının nihai belirleyicisi olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. On dokuzuncu yüzyıl İngiliz kadın hayatında evliliğin merkeziliğini göz önüne alan bu makale, Austen'ın romanlarında konunun işlenmesi ışığında, evliliğin sosyo-ekonomik bir teşvik ve ayrıca sınıfsal statü belirleme unsurları olması üzerine bir inceleme ortaya koyacaktır. Bu çalışmanın argümanı, evli bir kadının femme covert yani “zevcin himayesi” olması sebebiyle maddi ve yasal sınırlamalara tabi tutulmasına rağmen— kadının hukuki varlığının kocanın idaresi dahilinde sayılmasından ötürü—Austen'in evlilik birlikteliklerinin oluşturulmasında rol oynayan güdüleri ve ince ayrıntıları, özellikle sınıf statüsü belirleyiciliği bağlamında, gerçekçi bir şekilde ele alması kadınların on dokuzuncu yüzyıl başlarındaki İngiliz toplumunda evliliğin hayatlarındaki yeri hakkındaki görüşlerine dair önemli bilgiler sağlar.

The Marriage Market, Labor Supply, and Education Choice

We develop an equilibrium lifecycle model of education, marriage and labor supply and consumption in a transferable utility context. Individuals start by choosing their investments in education anticipating returns in the marriage market and the labor market. They then match based on the economic value of marriage and on preferences. Equilibrium in the marriage market determines intrahousehold allocation of resources. Following marriage households (married or single) save, supply labor and consume private and public commodities under uncertainty. Marriage thus has the dual role of providing public goods and offering risk sharing. The model is estimated using the British HPS.

Returns to women’s education using optimal IV selection

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates returns to women’s education by applying an optimal IV selection approach, post-Lasso IV estimation, which improves the first-stage predictive relationship between an endogenous regressor and instruments. Using the 2010 American Community Survey, we find that an extra year of education increases married women’s own income by $4,480 and spouse income by $8,822. Our findings indicate that 53% of the increase in women’s consumption by education is attributed to the marriage market, and thus, we conclude that the marriage market is the primary channel through which education improves women’s well-being. The results demonstrate the advantages of the post-Lasso approach: The resulting two-stage least squares estimator maintains efficiency without increasing finite sample bias and is less subject to the inconsistency problem when some instruments are invalid; This differs from the results using the instrument of birth quarters only, which is mostly applied in studies on returns to education.

Migration, marriage and social mobility: Women in Sweden 1880–1900

We study the intergenerational social mobility of women by looking at how migration was associated with socioeconomic marriage mobility using complete-count census data for Sweden. The censuses 1880–1900 have been linked at the individual level, enabling us to follow almost 100,000 women from their parental home to their new marital household. Marriage market imbalances were not an important push factor for migration but we find a strong association between migration distance and marriage outcomes, both in terms of overall marriage probabilities and in terms of partner selection by SES. These results highlight the importance of migration for women's intergenerational social mobility during industrialization.

Performance pay, the marriage market and rising income inequality in Taiwan

Taiwan expanded its college access significantly over the past two decades by converting 2-year junior colleges to 4-year colleges and relaxing entrance standards. The share of college graduates in the 22–24 years old population rose from 12 to 71% between 1990 and 2014. This should have suppressed returns to schooling and lowered household income inequality. Instead, Taiwan’s Gini coefficient rose. We show that rising use of performance pay and positive assortative mating in the marriage market jointly increase the household income inequality by 46.5% between 1980 and 2014. Our results suggest that uneven quality of the most recent cohorts of college graduates led to two sources of rising household income inequality: the increased use of bonus pay which increases residual inequality among college graduates; and matching on unobserved skills in the marriage market which increases inequality among married couples.

The effect of conditional cash transfers on reporting violence against women to the police in Mexico

This paper examines the effect of Oportunidades, Mexico’s conditional cash tranfers program, on reporting violence against women to the police. I use specialized survey data to estimate the effect of additional reports to the police for poor women who experienced spousal abuse prior to participating in Oportunidades. The identification strategy for this paper consists of two instrumental variables that are based on institutional characteristics of Oportunidades: i) drop out variation caused by the type of hospital available in any given locality (e.g. federal versus state-run) and ii) the roll-out in the densification process. Findings indicate an increase of 30.2% in the reporting rates as a consequence of receiving Oportunidades. I propose several channels through which treatment might work into the final outcome: i) assimilation of women’s rights; ii) an increase of trust in the police; and iii) a new equilibrium in the marriage market in which more future dissolutions and fewer reconciliations occur among abused beneficiary women.

Does daughter deficit promote paternal substance use? Evidence from China.

China and various other countries have experienced unbalanced sex ratios in the marriage market, which triggers intense competition and pressure to get married. Meanwhile, China has more smokers and drinkers than any other countries in the world. This paper provides evidence on smoking and alcohol use as a stress coping strategy for the competitive marriage market. This paper utilizes two household longitudinal datasets from rural China-a national survey and a regional survey-to examine paternal substance use in response to skewed sex ratios of their children's generation. The longitudinal feature of the two datasets enables us to explore within household variation in smoking and alcohol use. Sex ratios are matched using a 1% sample of the 2000 China Population Census. Strikingly, paternal smoking and alcohol use are more intense for families with a son living in communities with higher sex ratios. In contrast, those with a daughter do not demonstrate this pattern. Coping with the marriage market pressure is a plausible pathway linking the observed skewed sex ratios and intense substance use. High male-to-female sex ratios promote smoking and alcohol drinking among fathers with sons. Considering the highly competitive marriage market in the coming decade and the prevalent substance use that generates lasting health impacts and large negative externalities to society, policies that address the skewed sex ratios could lead to substantial welfare gains.

Physical Attractiveness and the Female Life-Cycle in Seventeenth-Century England

ABSTRACTThis article draws on evidence from diaries and letters to discuss how women of the aristocracy, gentry and middling-sorts in seventeenth-century England conceptualised their own physical attractiveness and that of other women. Moving beyond histories of fashion and aesthetics, which have prioritised male opinions, the article demonstrates that women recognised the importance of maintaining an attractive appearance across the life-cycle. Particular attention was paid to the emergence of good looks during adolescence; the importance of physical appearance alongside other qualities in the marriage market; and the means by which physical changes and their psychological impacts were negotiated in later life.

Fertility and Labor Market Responses to Reductions in Mortality

We investigate women's fertility, labor and marriage market responses to large declines in child and maternal mortality that occurred following a major medical innovation in the US. In response to the decline in child mortality, women delayed childbearing and had fewer children overall. Fewer women had three or more children, and a larger share remained childless. We present a new theory of the extensive margin response, premised upon improvements in child survival reducing the time women need to achieve their target number of children. This prompts fertility delay and labor market entry which, coupled with wage or fecundity shocks, can result in childlessness. Consistent with these predictions, we find that reductions in child mortality increased women's labor force participation, improved their occupational status and reduced their chances of ever having married. Maternal mortality decline had opposing effects on all of these outcomes.

A New Estimator of Search Duration and Its Application to the Marriage Market

AbstractIt is well known that female age at first marriage positively correlates with male income inequality. The common interpretation of this fact is that marital search takes longer when the pool of potential mates is more unequal. This paper challenges that interpretation with a novel econometric method. I utilize the fact that the female age at first marriage was shown to be a sum of a skewed term, possibly related to search, and a normally distributed residual. I estimate search duration as the expected skewed term. I find that in the American data this term does not positively correlate with male income inequality and female education.

Parental education, gender preferences and child nutritional status in Peru

ABSTRACTThis paper examines whether the distribution of bargaining power between parents affects nutritional indicators in the early stages of a child’s life, giving evidence that the allocation of household resources varies by the gender of the child and the parents. After accounting for the potential endogeneity of the indicator of power distribution within the household, related to assortative mating in the marriage market, this paper shows that maternal power is more positively associated with girls’ nutrition than boys’. Among households located in rural areas, resource allocation between girls and boys seems to differ. Similarly, some evidence of competition for household resources affecting girls’ nutrition is found.

On the Stability of Couples

In this article, we analyze the stability of couples on the marriage market. Recent developments in cooperative game theory allow a new model that uses team games which make it possible to model the marriage market. Coalition structures can model couples. We analyze two cases: a symmetrical one with only one type of men and one type of women; and one with several types of women and men.

Mixed marriages between immigrants and natives in Spain: The gendered effect of marriage market constraints

Background: Spain has become an important immigrant destination relatively recently. Marriages between natives and immigrants are among the most important agents of social and cultural change in contemporary Spanish society. Objective: This study’s aim is to analyse the propensity to enter mixed-nativity marriages among both natives and immigrants in Spain, focusing on the roles played by both individual and marriage market characteristics. Methods: The study combines data from the National Immigrant Survey (2007) and the Marriages Register (2008). Multivariate analysis is based on multinomial logistic regression, with an event history approach for immigrants and cross-sectional approach for natives. Results: Immigrant groups, and particularly immigrant men, differ considerably in their propensity to intermarry. Education is positively associated with exogamy among immigrant men but is not an important predictor of intermarriage among immigrant women. By contrast, the marriage market structure is more important for immigrant women than men. The analysis for natives shows only limited support for the exchange hypothesis. Educational exchange can be observed in the mixed marriages of native women with some immigrant groups but is observed much less often for native men. Age difference within the couple is more frequently consistent with some sort of exchange between immigrant and native partners. Conclusions: Our results suggest that there is not one marriage market but several for different groups and that the patterns of native/immigrant marriage in Spain are strongly gendered. Contribution: This is the first study on intermarriage in Spain to look at both natives and immigrants.

An economic model of early marriage

To explain female adolescent marriage patterns around the world, we develop a marriage market model with asymmetric information about prospective marriage partners, and a noisy signal about the bride’s quality during an engagement. In equilibrium, there is a negative relationship between the age and perceived quality of women on the marriage market and, consistent with available evidence, older brides make higher net marriage payments. The model also implies path dependence in the evolution of adolescent marriage practices over time and persistent effects on marriage practices from transitory shocks. Model simulations show interventions which increase the opportunity cost of early marriage attenuates the association between bride quality and age, triggering a virtuous cycle of marriage postponement.

Parent-offspring conflict over mate choice: An experimental study in China.

Both parents and offspring have evolved mating preferences that enable them to select mates and children-in-law to maximize their inclusive fitness. The theory of parent-offspring conflict predicts that preferences for potential mates may differ between parents and offspring: individuals are expected to value biological quality more in their own mates than in their offspring's mates and to value investment potential more in their offspring's mates than in their own mates. We tested this hypothesis in China using a naturalistic 'marriage market' where parents actively search for marital partners for their offspring. Parents gather at a public park to advertise the characteristics of their adult children, looking for a potential son or daughter-in-law. We presented 589 parents and young adults from the city of Kunming (Yunnan, China) with hypothetical mating candidates varying in their levels of income (proxy for investment potential) and physical attractiveness (proxy for biological quality). We found some evidence of a parent-offspring conflict over mate choice, but only in the case of daughters, who evaluated physical attractiveness as more important than parents. We also found an effect of the mating candidate's sex, as physical attractiveness was deemed more valuable in a female potential mate by parents and offspring alike.

Population dynamics and marriage payments: an analysis of the long run equilibrium in India

Abstract Why do scarce Indian women pay dowry to secure grooms even as the sex-ratio of offspring is manipulated by parents? We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model of demographic and marriage market outcomes with endogenous gender preference. We find, that under a calibration of parameters suggested by Indian marriage market indicators, any long run steady state equilibrium must have both dowry and a masculine sex ratio. The key assumption that generates this result is the asymmetric marital preferences of men and women regarding own and spouse’s ideal age at marriage.

“It’s Not Equality”: How Race, Class, and Gender Construct the Normative Religious Self among Female Prisoners

Prior sociological research has demonstrated that religious selves are gendered. Using the case of female inmates—some of the most disadvantaged Americans—this article shows that dominant messages constructing the religious self are not only gendered, but also deeply intertwined with race and class. Data from 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork on religion inside a U.S. state women’s prison reveal that religious volunteers—predominately middle-class African American women—preached feminine submissiveness and finding a “man of God” to marry to embody religious ideals. However, these messages were largely out of sync with the realities of working class and poor incarcerated women, especially given their temporary isolation from the marriage market and the marital prospects in the socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods to which many would return. These findings suggest that scholars must pay attention to how race, class, and gender define dominant discourses around the religious self and consider the implications for stratification for those who fail to fulfill this dominant ideology.

A multilevel study of gender egalitarian values across Muslim-majority provinces: the role of women and urban spaces

ABSTRACT In global value research, Muslim-majority countries emerge not only as consistently more patriarchal but also as a rather homogeneous cultural cluster to that effect. We, however, know little about the variation within Muslim-majority countries in these values through comparative analysis of subnational units. This limits the possibility of identifying ‘localized pockets of transformation’ in support for gender equality in what the global research depicts as a relatively stagnate region. This manuscript is a first attempt at explaining the subnational variation in gender egalitarian values across Muslim-majority countries and its effect on key individual-level variables like gender. We model province and individual-level variance across 64 provinces in Egypt, Iran and Turkey with multilevel analysis (Hierarchical Linear Modeling HLM 7.0). Results show that whether provinces are more urban positively influences gender egalitarian values. At the individual level, we find that whether provinces are more urban has the most powerful impact on unmarried women in increasing support for gender equality. Based on the results, we conclude that research must pay greater attention to the local contexts in which Muslim women are embedded, like their provinces, in terms of the opportunities they create outside of the ‘marriage market’ and the implications for their support of gender equality.

The SK-II #changedestiny campaign and the limits of commodity activism for women’s equality in neo/non-liberal China

ABSTRACTThis article examines one market-based intervention to combat gender discrimination in China, beauty brand SK-II’s #changedestiny campaign, and in particular an accompanying video, Marriage Market Takeover, which attempts to challenge the cultural stigma of “leftover women” (single women over 25). By mobilizing affect and highlighting the self-optimizing subject, SK-II, through the #changedestiny campaign, positions itself as a key instigator of women’s empowerment, and ultimately of not only familial, but also societal, change. In this regard, it follows the logic of what Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee (in Commodity activism: Cultural resistance in neoliberal times [NYU Press, 2012]) call commodity activism, or the merging of consumer behavior with efforts at social change within neoliberal brand culture. However, in a context we call “neo/non-liberal China,” modes of authoritarian and therapeutic governance intersect, and consumer subjects, not consumer citizens, are encouraged. We argue that through offering resistance to, and a resolution situated within familial relationships, the #changedestiny campaign does little to challenge the patriarchal “leftover women” discourse. We further argue that gender discrimination is raised in the #changedestiny campaign as a way to rationalize a neoliberal emphasis on consumption, self-care, and personal fulfillment, and that ultimately gender—as well as class—norms are reaffirmed despite the campaign’s efforts to promote meaningful social change.