Marriage market dynamics, gender, and the age gap

We present a general discrete choice framework for analyzing 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,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc
Main Author Shephard, Andrew
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 01.01.2019
Subjects
Economic models
Marriage
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Summary:We present a general discrete choice framework for analyzing 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 labor 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 behavior. We use our estimated model to quantify the impact of the significant reduction in the gender wage gap since the 1980s on marriage outcomes.