Search Results
Working Paper
Peer Effects and Marriage Formation
A large literature links marriage to later life outcomes for children and adults. Marriage has declined markedly in the U.S. over the last 50 years, particularly among individuals with less than a baccalaureate degree, yet the causes of the decline are not well understood. In this paper we provide causal evidence on one potential mechanism for the observed marriage rate patterns: peer effects. We use administrative personnel data from the U.S. Army to study how peers influence marriage decisions for junior enlisted soldiers arriving to their first assignment from 2001-2018, a setting which ...
Working Paper
Is Our Fiscal System Discouraging Marriage? A New Look at the Marriage Tax
We develop, apply, and test a new measure of the marriage tax: the reduction in future spending from getting married. Our measure is a comprehensive, actuarial (expected) present value. It incorporates all major and most minor US tax and benefit programs, weighing the present value of additional net taxes from marrying along each marital survivor path by the path’s probability. And it assumes clone marriage—marrying oneself—to ensure the living-standard loss from marrying is unaffected by spousal choice. We calculate our marriage tax for young respondents using the Survey of Consumer ...
Working Paper
Marriage Market Sorting in the U.S.
We examine shifts in the U.S. marriage market, assessing how online dating, demographic changes and evolving societal norms influence mate choice and broader sorting trends. Using a targeted search model, we analyze mate selection based on factors such as education, age, race, income and skill. Intriguingly, despite the rise of online dating, preferences, mate choice and overall sorting patterns showed negligible change from 2008 to 2021. However, a longer historical view from 1960 to 2020 reveals a trend toward preferences for similarity, particularly concerning income, education and skills. ...
From Dating to Marriage: Has Online Dating Made a Difference?
Has online dating improved marriage matches? An economic model that examines partner selection shows minimal changes since 2008.
Report
Educational assortative mating and household income inequality
We document the degree of educational assortative mating, how it evolves over time, and the extent to which it differs between countries. Our analysis focuses on the United States but also uses data from Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Norway. We find evidence of positive assortative mating at all levels of education in each country. However, the time trends vary by the level of education: Among college graduates, assortative mating has been declining over time, whereas individuals with a low level of education are increasingly sorting into internally homogeneous marriages. These ...
Working Paper
Why has home ownership fallen among the young?
We document that home ownership of households with "heads" aged 25 - 44 years fell substantially between 1980 and 2000 and recovered only partially during the 2001-2005 housing boom. The 1980-2000 decline in young home ownership occurred as improvements in mortgage opportunities made it easier to purchase a home. This paper uses an equilibrium life-cycle model calibrated to micro and macro evidence to understand why young home ownership fell over a period when it became easier to own a home. Our findings indicate that a trend toward marrying later and the increase in household earnings risk ...
Journal Article
Research Spotlight: Marriage is Extra Work
An immense literature in economics is devoted to studying the labor supply of women and determining whether their supply differs by marital status or the presence of children. This literature has found, not surprisingly, that married women tend to have a lower supply of labor compared to women who have never been married. But there has been substantially less research on the relationship of marital status and labor supply for men. It turns out there is also a gap in annual hours worked between married men and men who have never been married, with married men working substantially more. ...
Journal Article
Chances aren't
While we tend to think of whom and when we marry as an individual decision, social and economic forces play a major role.
Working Paper
Marriage Market Sorting in the U.S.
We examine shifts in the U.S. marriage market, assessing how online dating, demographic changes, and evolving societal norms influence mate choice and broader sorting trends. Using a targeted search model, we analyze mate selection based on factors such as education, age, race, income, and skill. Intriguingly, despite the rise of online dating, preferences, mate choice, and overall sorting patterns showed negligible change from 2008 to 2021. However, a longer historical view from 1960 to 2020 reveals a trend toward preferences for similarity, particularly concerning income, education, and ...
Working Paper
Women's emancipation through education: a macroeconomic analysis
In this paper, we study the role of education as insurance against a bad marriage. Historically, due to disparities in earning power and education across genders, married women often found themselves in an economically vulnerable position, and had to suffer one of two fates in a bad marriage: either they get divorced (assuming it is available) and struggle as low-income single mothers, or they remain trapped in the marriage. In both cases, education can provide a route to emancipation for women. To investigate this idea, we build and estimate an equilibrium search model with education, ...