On the Emergence of Toyboys: Equilibrium Matching with Ageing and Uncertain Careers

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On the Emergence of Toyboys: Equilibrium Matching with Ageing and Uncertain Careers

Author Info

Melvyn G. Coles () (University of Essex)
Marco Francesconi () (University of Essex and IZA)

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Abstract

Toyboy marriages (where the female partner is at least 5 years older than her male partner) have grown threefold since the 1970s in the United States and Britain. This paper examines this phenomenon using an equilibrium search framework in which becoming successful in the labour market takes time and fitness decays with age. Our framework hinges on contract incompleteness in the marriage market and the assumption that the marginal gain to marrying someone rich is greatest for someone poor. With this structure we can explain why successful (older) types might marry fitter (younger) and less successful types. We show that toyboy marriages arise in equilibrium only when men and women have comparable labour market opportunities. U.S. and British data confirm this indicating that the probability that a woman is married to a toyboy increases by about 45 percent if, relative to her partner’s, she is more educated and in a better paid job.

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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 2612.

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Length: 45 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2612

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2007-03-24 (All new papers)
NEP-LAB-2007-03-24 (Labour Economics)

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repec:bep:macfro:v:1:y:2004:i:1:p:1102-1102 is not listed on IDEAS
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