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Who Benefits from Marriage?

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Author Info
Esfandiar Maasoumi ()
Daniel L. Millimet
Dipanwita Sarkar

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Abstract

The phenomenon that married men earn higher average wages than unmarried men, the so-called marriage premium, is well known. However, the robustness of the marriage premium across the wage distribution and the underlying causes of the marriage premium deserve closer scrutiny. Focusing on the entire wage distribution and employing recently developed semi-nonparametric tests for quantile treatment effects, our findings cast doubt on the robustness of the premium. We find that the premium is explained by selection above the median, whereas a positive premium is obtained only at very low wages. We argue that the causal effect at low wages is probably attributable to employer discrimination.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics, Emory University (Atlanta) in its series Emory Economics with number 0807.

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Date of creation: Oct 2008
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Handle: RePEc:emo:wp2003:0807

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  1. Abadie A., 2002. "Bootstrap Tests for Distributional Treatment Effects in Instrumental Variable Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 97, pages 284-292, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Cornwell, Christopher & Rupert, Peter, 1997. "Unobservable Individual Effects, Marriage and the Earnings of Young Men," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(2), pages 285-94, April.
  3. Esfandiar Maasoumi & Almas Heshmati, 2000. "Stochastic dominance amongst swedish income distributions," Econometric Reviews, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 287-320. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Oliver Linton & Esfandiar Maasoumi & Yoon-Jae Whang, 2002. "Consistent Testing for Stochastic Dominance: A Subsampling Approach," STICERD - Econometrics Paper Series /2002/433, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Joni Hersch, 1991. "Male-female differences in hourly wages: The role of human capital, working conditions, and housework," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 44(4), pages 746-759, July.
  6. Daniel L. Millimet & Esfandiar Maasoumi, 2005. "Robust inference concerning recent trends in US environmental quality," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 55-77. [Downloadable!]
  7. Millimet, Daniel L. & Nieswiadomy, Michael & Ryu, Hang & Slottje, Daniel, 2003. "Estimating worklife expectancy: an econometric approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 83-113, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Duncan, Greg J & Holmlund, Bertil, 1983. "Was Adam Smith Right after All? Another Test of the Theory of Compensating Wage Differentials," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(4), pages 366-79, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Joni Hersch & Leslie S. Stratton, 2000. "Household specialization and the male marriage wage premium," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 54(1), pages 78-94, October.
  10. David Neumark & Daiji Kawaguchi, 2001. "Attrition Bias in Economic Relationships Estimated with Matched CPS Files," NBER Working Papers 8663, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Sergio Firpo, 2007. "Efficient Semiparametric Estimation of Quantile Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 259-276, 01. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Jacobsen, Joyce P & Rayack, Wendy L, 1996. "Do Men Whose Wives Work Really Earn Less?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 268-73, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. David Neumark & Sanders D. Korenman, 1988. "Does marriage really make men more productive?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 29, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  14. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-46, July-Aug.. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Gunnar Isacsson, 2007. "Twin Data vs. Longitudinal Data to Control for Unobserved Variables in Earnings Functions - Which Are the Differences?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 69(3), pages 339-362, 06. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2007. "Changes in the Labor Supply Behavior of Married Women: 1980–2000," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25, pages 393-438. [Downloadable!]
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  17. Blackburn, McKinley & Korenman, Sanders, 1994. "The Declining Marital-Status Earnings Differential," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 247-70, July.
  18. Kate Antonovics & Robert Town, 2004. "Are All The Good Men Married? Uncovering the Sources of the Marital Wage Premium," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series 2003-15, Department of Economics, UC San Diego. [Downloadable!]
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  19. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-75, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  20. Marianne P. Bitler & Jonah B. Gelbach & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2006. "What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 988-1012, September. [Downloadable!]
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  21. Imbens, Guido W & Rubin, Donald B, 1997. "Estimating Outcome Distributions for Compliers in Instrumental Variables Models," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 64(4), pages 555-74, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  22. Donna K. Ginther & Madeline Zavodny, 2001. "Is the male marriage premium due to selection? The effect of shotgun weddings on the return to marriage," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 313-328. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  23. Chun, Hyunbae & Lee, Injae, 2001. "Why Do Married Men Earn More: Productivity or Marriage Selection?," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 39(2), pages 307-19, April.
  24. Heckman, James J. & Lalonde, Robert J. & Smith, Jeffrey A., 1999. "The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1865-2097 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  25. Harry A. Krashinsky, 2004. "Do Marital Status and Computer Usage Really Change the Wage Structure?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(3). [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  26. Leslie S. Stratton, 2002. "Examining the Wage Differential for Married and Cohabiting Men," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 199-212, April.
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