The marital satisfaction of differently aged couples

Lee, Wang-Sheng; McKinnish, Terra

doi:10.1007/s00148-017-0658-8

Cited by 46 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…A 10% increase in the relative wage-roughly the variation that I leverage over this period-leads to a 16% increase in the share of women married to a higher-educated spouse. Women are also less likely to be married to an older spouse, which recent surveys find is associated with lower marital satisfaction (Lee & McKinnish, 2017). Further, descriptive evidence suggests a higher relative income is associated with greater marital happiness for couples with a dominant male earner, as in the model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 63%

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

Shenhav

2021

The Review of Economics and Statistics

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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 (i) increases the quality of women's mates, as measured by higher spousal education, (ii) reduces marriage without substitution to cohabitation, and (iii) raises women's hours of work. These effects are consistent with a model in which a higher relative wage increases the minimum non-pecuniary benefits (“quality”) women require from a spouse and therefore reduce marriage among low-quality husbands.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…I find that a 10% increase in the relative wage leads to a 15% increase in the probability of marrying a partner more educated than oneself (5.1 p.p. ), which results from equal declines in the 18 See, e.g., Mansour andMcKinnish (2013), Hitsch, Hortasu, andAriely (2010), Low (2016), and Lee and McKinnish (2017).…”

Section: B Spousal Matchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Shenhav

2021

The Review of Economics and Statistics

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“…Also, in the social and psychological literatures, age-gap carries some meaning for partners in any relationship and differences beyond 10 years appear to be regarded as non-normative, this leads to marital satisfaction declines. Substantially leads to more social disapproval regarding their relationship than does couples with only a minimal or no age gap [ 10 , 16 ]. The finding was also in line with the study conducted in India, where the age difference between spouses influence marital stability, marital satisfaction, family size preference and contraceptive use [ 2 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spousal age difference and its effect on contraceptive use among sexually active couples in Ethiopia: evidence from the 2016 Ethiopia demographic and health survey

Kitila

Terfa

Akuma

et al. 2020

Contracept Reprod Med

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Background Age difference among spouses can be considered as an indicator of the nature of the marital bond, and influences the couple’s fertility expectations. The age difference is one of the features of the traditional African marriage system. However, the likelihood that women use of contraceptives and spousal age differences is not well studied. Thus, this study was to examine the spousal age difference on contraceptive use. Objective This study was aimed to examine spousal age differences and its effect on contraceptive use among sexually active couples in Ethiopia. Methods The related variables for this study were extracted from Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2016 data. IBM SPSS statistics version 20 software was used for analysis. Logistic regression was conducted to see the association between spousal age difference and contraceptive use. All analyses were adjusted for sample weights. Results Out of the 7268 selected women for contraceptive usage questions, one fourth (25.3%) of them were between ages 25 and 29 and in almost all 7061 (98.4%) of them there was spousal age differences, 1555 (21.4%) of them were from poor socioeconomic group. Nearly all 7184 (98.8%) of them knew contraceptive method. However, among those sexually active in the last 4 weeks only two in five (41.2%) were using a contraceptive method. Spousal age difference was found to be significant factor and women older than their spouses were (AOR: 1.771, 95%CI: 1.276, 2.459) more likely and women having spouse’s age difference greater than 10 years were 1.2% (AOR: .988, 95%CI: .848, 1.150) less likely to use contraception compared to those age difference is ten or less than years respectively. Also, women who were living in urban areas (AOR: 1.482, 95%CI: 1.161 to 1.890), current working status (AOR: 1.170; 95%CI: 1.033 to 1.325), from richest economic category (AOR: 2.560; 95%CI: 2.000 to 3.278) husband’s education, couples’ fertility preference (AOR: 1.233; 95%CI: 1.070 to 1.420) were contraception use predictors. Similarly, being Muslim by religion (AOR: .579 95%CI: 0.496 to 0.675) and husband based decision for their health care use were (AOR: .847, CI: .729 to .985) less likely to use contraception. Conclusion and recommendation This study found association between spousal age differences and contraceptive use. Similarly, women’s age, age difference, place of residence, religion, current working status, socioeconomic, husband’s education, living children and current pregnancy, the couples’ fertility preference and who decides on health care use were found to be predictors of contraceptive use. Strengthening strategies for improving women’s educational status, socio-economic and demographic that will help to limit the age differences and improve contraceptive use. Further study, including qualitative is recommended to dig out the why components and better understand this finding.

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“…We construct 2 measures of the quality of the match: the age and education gaps between spouses. Empirically, small age gaps predict greater satisfaction (Lee and McKinnish, 2018) and lower divorce rates (Lillard et al, 1995), and they are preferred in online dating (Hitsch et al, 2010). However, in most populations husbands are older than wives.…”

Section: Who Do Mothers On Welfare Remarry?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Incentive Effects of Cash Transfers to the Poor

Aizer

Eli

Lleras‐Muney

2020

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All redistributive and social insurance programs trade off the potential benefits of transfers with the disincentives these programs generate. We investigate this trade-off using newly collected lifetime data for 16,000 women who applied to the Mothers' Pension Program, the first cash transfer program in the US. In the short-run cash transfers reduced geographic mobility and delayed marriage of recipients but did not affect who they married or where they moved to. In the long run transfers had no effect on work, marriage or fertility behaviors. They also did not improve the economic conditions of recipients or their longevity.

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The marital satisfaction of differently aged couples

Cited by 46 publications

References 30 publications

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

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

Spousal age difference and its effect on contraceptive use among sexually active couples in Ethiopia: evidence from the 2016 Ethiopia demographic and health survey

The Incentive Effects of Cash Transfers to the Poor

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