Marriage Market Dynamics, Gender, and the Age Gap

Abstract

We present a general discrete choice framework for analysing household formation and dissolution decisions in an equilibrium limited-commitment collective framework that allows for marriage both within and across birth cohorts. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics and American Community Survey data, we apply our framework to empirically implement a time allocation model with labour market earnings risk, human capital accumulation, home production activities, fertility, and both within-and across-cohort marital matching. Our model replicates the bivariate marriage distribution by age, and explains some of the most salient life-cycle patterns of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and time allocation behaviour. We use our estimated model to quantify the impact of the significant reduction in the gender wage gap since the 1980s on marriage outcomes.

Structural Models: Inception and Frontier

“…Chiappori and Mazzoco (2017) provide a comprehensive summary of this line of research. A synthesis of the structural literature on marriage market equilibrium and intrahousehold allocation is emerging (see Chiappori et al (2019), Gousse et al (2019) and Shephard (2019)).…”

Cohabitation vs. Marriage: Mating Strategies by Education in The USA

“…Alternatively, I could have obtained the same level of assortative mating by education assuming random meeting probabilities and that the couple receives an additional utility flow based on her and her partner's education.28 This value is taken from the PSID.29 In the life cycle models featured inCiscato (2019),Shephard (2019) andReynoso (2019) assortative mating arises in marriage markets through the interactions of preferences, incentives, supply and demand forces.…”