Marriage Market Research Articles

Marriage and employment participation with wage bargaining in search equilibrium

AbstractWe build an equilibrium search model where married couples make joint decisions on home production and labour market participation and analyse the implications of our results for a frictional marriage market. A worker's bargaining position reflects their productivity, and the productivity and employment status of their spouse. People sometimes accept transitory jobs only to raise the spouse's long‐term wages. Firms sometimes reduce turnover by unilaterally increasing a worker's wage, ensuring that the spouse stays at home.

Why Bother? The Effect of Declining Marriage Market Prospects on Labor-Force Participation by Young Men

Why have so many young men left the U.S. workforce? This paper develops a model in which men earn a marriage market return on past employment. It hypothesizes that this return declined as gender-role-specialized marriage became a less efficient arrangement. It establishes causal evidence for this hypothesis by identifying two shocks that lowered the returns to gender role specialization: growth in female employment opportunities across U.S. commuting zones from 1980-2016, and unilateral divorce regime transitions across U.S. states in the 1970s. These shocks reduce marriage and labor-force participation (LFP) among young men without college and can account for 1/4 of their long-run LFP decline. Policy implications of these results are discussed.

What is the association between the ethnic composition of neighbourhoods, workplaces and schools and the formation of mixed‐ethnic unions?

AbstractAlthough ethnic diversity and the types of interpersonal ties that are experienced in various domains of life may vary considerably, studies regarding the local marriage market rarely focus on the relationship between the formation of mixed‐ethnic unions and the ethnic composition of more than one spatial context. In this study, by applying event history analysis methods to longitudinal register data from Finland, we address three spatial contexts: residential neighbourhoods, workplaces and schools. The main finding is that getting in contact with natives in all three spatial contexts elevates the probability of the formation of a mixed‐ethnic union between migrants and natives. Exposure to natives in residential neighbourhoods and workplaces does not lose its relevance for partnership outcomes among immigrants who have arrived in the host country as children, or among the descendants of immigrants. On the contrary, the effects that can be associated with higher concentrations of immigrants in neighbourhoods and workplaces tend to increase in strength for the second generation rather than decrease.

More choice for men? Marriage patterns after World War II in Italy

AbstractWe investigate how changes in the sex ratio induced by World War II affected the bargaining patterns of Italian men in the marriage market. Marriage data from the first wave of the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey (1997) are matched with newly digitized information on war casualties coming from the Italian National Bureau of Statistics. We find that men in post-war marriages were better off in terms of their spouse's education, this gain amounting to about half a year of schooling. By considering heterogeneity across provinces, we find that the effects were more pronounced in rural provinces, mountainous provinces, and provinces with a higher share of population employed in agriculture. This result suggests that in these provinces the war caused a more fundamental change in marriage patterns compared to urban, lower-lying, and less agricultural provinces where marriage markets might have been more flexible to begin with.

Disease and fertility: Evidence from the 1918–19 influenza pandemic in Sweden

What are the consequences of a severe health shock like an influenza pandemic on fertility? Using rich administrative data and a difference-in-differences approach, we evaluate fertility responses to the 1918–19 influenza pandemic in Sweden. We find evidence of a small baby boom following the end of the pandemic, but we show that this effect is second-order compared to a strong long-term negative fertility effect. Within this net fertility decline there are compositional effects: we observe a relative increase in births to married women and to better-off families. Several factors – including disruptions to the marriage market and income effects – contribute to the long-term fertility reduction. The results are consistent with studies that find a positive fertility response following natural disasters, but we show that this effect is short-lived.

House or Degree? Rising Housing Prices and Women’s Educational Preference in Mate Selection

The house naturally has a sense of belonging and value attributes of a home, making it the main signal medium for women to resolve the asymmetry of information in the marriage market and screen high-quality objects. However, in recent years, housing prices have continued to rise, which has greatly increased the signal transmission cost of houses. In comparison, the signal transmission cost of education is lower, and its value has been continuously highlighted. So, do rising house prices affect women’s educational preference in mate selection?This article first analyzes the internal logic between house, education and marriage matching from the signal perspective, and finds that in marriage matching, the house is a signal that conveys the man’s family economic status, while education is a signal that conveys the man’s personal ability. Under the circumstances, the sharp increase in the cost of house signal transmission may cause the house signal to transmit the family’s economic status to “failure”, thereby prompting the signal transmission cost to be relatively low.On this basis, this article matches the CGSS data in 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015 with the housing market data, and uses the OLS regression, Tobit regression and IV-2SLS regression models to analyze the relationship between housing prices and women’s educational preference in mate selection. It is estimated that after dealing with endogenous problems, the conclusions obtained are still stable.The results show that: （1）Rising housing prices have significantly increased women’s educational preference in mate selection, that is, the higher the housing price, the more obvious the role of academic qualifications in the marriage market as a substitute for houses, and women’s educational preference in mate selection will increase accordingly.（2）For women with poor resource endowments such as lower-class families, central and western regions, or rural household registration, rising housing prices have changed the way women rely on houses to “marry up”, and the value of education in the marriage market has become more prominent.The conclusions of this paper indicate that if housing prices continue to rise, the education signal will further replace the house signal. Therefore, guaranteeing the labor market’s return on education and accelerating the establishment of a housing system that incorporates both rent and purchase will improve the marriage happiness of residents, especially those with relatively poor resource endowments.

Marriage outcomes of displaced women

To learn more about the long-term consequences of displacement on women, we examine the marriage market outcomes of forcibly displaced women. Using data from 12 representative surveys in 7 countries, we document that women who are adolescents at the time of displacement are more likely to be married. This pattern is robust to choice of comparison group and across countries. We do not find this pattern for displaced adolescent men. We provide additional evidence on this relationship by using unique features of the partition of India in 1947, an event which resulted in large-scale bilateral displacement between India and newly formed Pakistan. Specifically, we use the plausibly exogenous timing and the arbitrary nature of the border drawing to motivate a difference-in-difference design. Using a representative household survey collected in 1973, we find that women who were adolescents when they were displaced by partition were significantly more likely to marry earlier, in line with the descriptive cross country evidence. These women were less likely to continue their education and had more children overall, but do not appear to have married spouses with worse observable characteristics.

The Chester Penn Higby Prize for 2020

The Chester Penn Higby Prize for 2020

When migration is a necessity: Negotiating womanhood and abandonment in the transnational marriages of Ethiopians in the Amhara Region

ABSTRACT Transnational marriages involving wives mainly from the Amhara Region, Ethiopia, and migrant husbands from abroad have been common in the region ever since the 1990s, resulting in compound effects on the socio-economic order in Amhara. The article analyses how transnational marriage is envisaged by women in Amhara and has a negative affect on their lives. The analysis is based on triangulated data collected through interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and document analysis. It has been consistently theorised that transnational marriages and the opening up of the marriage market for women has created a scarcity of wives that negatively affects the lives of men in migrants’ origin countries. The study reveals the broad effects of transnational marriages on the gender dynamics in Amhara. The author concludes that the success related to transnational marriages and subsequent remittances creates a fragile negotiation power among women seeking migrant husbands and abandons many women as singletons and single mothers, thereby contributing to the social ethos of unmarried women and of single-parent families. Given the patriarchal conventions in Amhara, abandonment constitutes much more complicated psychosocial effects. Abandoned women suffer stigma and neglect, another constituent characterising the social ills created by transnational marriages.

The role of own-group density and local social norms for ethnic marital sorting: Evidence from the UK.

We exploit the post-war immigration-induced regional variation in ethnic composition among British-born individuals to study inter-ethnic marriages in the UK. Black and Asian individuals are more likely to marry intra-ethnically in regions where the own ethnicity share is relatively large. In order to disentangle the relative roles played by supply effects, preferences and local social norms we estimate a structural marriage market model that allows for conformity behaviour. Using the estimated model, we make predictions for a set of more recent cohorts whose marital choices are still to be completed.

Searching on campus? The marriage market effects of changing student sex ratios

This paper studies how secular changes in the student sex ratio affect marriage market outcomes for university graduates. Using data from Germany, I find that a higher own-gender share within the field of study reduces marriage market opportunities for women, while the opposite is true for men. Moreover, an imbalanced student sex ratio changes the composition of couples. For women, a higher female share decreases the probability of having a spouse from the same field, while men are more likely to marry down with respect to educational status when the male share is high. These findings suggest that the secular changes in the sex ratio of university students have important implications beyond the labor market by affecting the household composition among the high-skilled population.

Migration in China: To work or to wed?

SummaryThis paper develops a model encompassing both matching and hedonic models, studies its properties, and provides identification and estimation strategies. We bring the model to data on internal migration in China to answer the question raised in the title. We estimate the migration surplus of singles and couples and the marital surplus of natives and, using counterfactuals together with our identification strategy, quantify the “marrying‐up” and the “work” effects of migration. Results show that, for floating (resp. permanent) migrant women married with urban men, the “marrying‐up” effect is positive but 3.5 (resp. 5) times smaller than the “work” effect. However, as these migrant women enter the urban marriage market, they generate equilibrium “marrying‐up” effects for all men and women by changing the relative supply of women on both the rural and urban marriage markets. These effects can be large relative to the “work” effect of migration for some types of migrants (floating migrant women married with a permanent migrant man and floating migrant women married with a floating migrant man) and represent about 13% of the equilibrium utility of urban native men.

Too educated to be married? An investigation into the relationship between education and marriage in China

ABSTRACT Human capital theory suggests that investment in education may generate marriage market returns. However, high expectations for potential marital partners by highly educated individuals, coupled with the huge cost of marriage driven by soaring housing prices in China, may discourage marriage intentions of highly educated people. Using the data from the China Family Panel Studies survey, we found that individuals with college education and above on average are less likely to get married than those who only finished high school or below. Our results are robust to potential functional misspecification and omitted variable bias. We also investigated possible explanations. Results indicate that, compared with individuals who have less than a college degree, those with at least a college degree are more likely to marry a person who has a college degree or above. In addition, an increase in housing prices exacerbates the negative impact of education on marriage.

Lowering Standards to Wed? Spouse Quality, Marriage, and Labor Market Responses to the Gender Wage Gap

Abstract This paper examines the effect of the female-to-male wage ratio, “relative wage,” on women's spouse quality, marriage, and labor supply over three decades. Exploiting task-based demand shifts as a shock to relative pay, I find that a higher relative wage (a) increases the quality of women's mates, as measured by higher spousal education; (b) reduces marriage without substitution to cohabitation; and (c) raises women's hours of work. These effects are consistent with a model in which a higher relative wage increases the minimum nonpecuniary benefits (“quality”) women require from a spouse and therefore reduce marriage among low-quality husbands.

A Winter in Bath, 1796-97: Life Writing and the Irish Adolescent Self

The diary form affords multiple generations of women with a vehicle for expressing themselves, and is particularly germane to younger writers, developing a voice, and shaping a sense of self as they emerge from childhood. Charting her travels from Ireland to Bath, the manuscript diary (1796–97) of Charity Lecky is exceptionally useful in exploring intersections with other genres, particularly the novel, while also affording us with an adolescent’s observations on life, and on Bath as international marriage market. The categories of youth, gender, and nation all play strong roles in Charity’s evolving sense of self, and enable us to explore these intersections and how they can inform a young person’s sense of worth. Frequently dismissed by male contemporaries as preoccupied only with balls and marriage prospects, the voices of such figures were repeatedly marginalised. This article prioritises both these voices and the diary form itself, and fuses their legitimate interest in courtship with a concern and fascination with national identity, recognising the value of young women’s opinions, and demonstrating how we might better understand the evolution of personal identities through inclusion of such source material.

Consequences of war: Japan’s demographic transition and the marriage market

This study explores the effects of imbalances in the sex ratio on both the quantity and the quality of children, with a focus on changes in intra-household bargaining power. We first present a theoretical model of intra-household bargaining in the presence of conflicting family goals within a couple, and show that male scarcity (a decrease in the male-to-female sex ratio) induces an increase in the number of children and a decrease in the quality of children. Second, using the impact of World War II on the sex ratio as a quasi-natural experiment, we establish empirically that the decrease in the male-to-female sex ratio in World War II contributed to a smaller decline in fertility and child mortality rates in postwar Japan. In particular, the fertility rate would have fallen by an additional 12% and the child mortality rate by an additional 13% between 1948 and 1970 absent the decrease in the sex ratio.

Socioeconomic determinants of demographic development of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

The study explores the peculiarities of demographic processes in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the socioeconomic factors determining them. The author tests hypotheses about the relationship of socioeconomic characteristics of the population with fertility and migration basing on data from 13 municipalities of the region for 2011–2017. The analysis reveals a statistically significant relationship between age-specific fertility rate for women aged 15–49 and such indicators as marriage and divorce rates, wages, the proportion of employed in the working-age population, the enrolment of children in preschool education, and the proportion of families who received housing or improved housing conditions among those registered in the housing program. Inbound migration rate is statistically related to wages, as well as to proportion of employed in the total working-age population, while outbound migration rate is linked to proportion of those employed in mining, as well as to indicators characterizing situation in the marriage market.

Do public pensions matter to marriage? Evidence from China

This article examines the role of public pensions on the marriage market based on China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Firstly, we investigate if the extensive margin of public pensions, i.e., whether to participate in public pensions or not, has a significant effect through Difference-in-Difference (DID). The results indicate that public pensions have a significant effect on marriage for both urban and rural residents, and the gender and income heterogeneity of the effect exists since public pensions have a significant effect on the male and high-income residents. Secondly, we focus on the mediation mechanisms and investigate how public pensions effect marriage through different channels. The results show that public pensions produce a positive effect on marriage through improving people's life satisfaction while public pensions produce a negative affect on marriage through reducing the number of children in the family. Finally, we investigate if the intensive margin of public pensions, i.e., increasing the benefits of public pensions, has a significant effect on marriage. We use the instrument variable (IV) model to reduce measurement bias stemming from endogeneity problems and find that increasing public pension benefits do not have a significant impact on marriage.

"Implications of Improvement in Women’s Education for Marriage Market Mismatch in Korea, 1990-2015"

"Implications of Improvement in Women’s Education for Marriage Market Mismatch in Korea, 1990-2015"

The marital earnings premium: an IV approach

Numerous studies find that married men earn more than single men. However, identifying whether and why marriage affects earnings is complicated by the fact that marriage market outcomes are jointly determined with potential earnings. As such, I exploit exogenous variation in marriage induced by the introduction of no-fault divorce laws in the USA to estimate the effect of marriage on the earnings of men. I find a 38% causal increase of marriage on earnings of husbands. This increase in earnings is explained by a large increase in labor market work after marriage. My findings are robust to the possibility of unobserved heterogeneity in the effect of marriage on earnings across individuals.