IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v5y2013i2p151-78.html

Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market

Author

Listed:
  • Jeanne Lafortune

Abstract

I explore how a gender's scarcity may impact educational investments using exogenous variation in the marriage market of second generation Americans in early twentieth century. I find that worse marriage market conditions spur higher pre-marital investments: the effect for males is significant, while, for females, it is only observed in highly endogamous groups. When faced with an exogenously larger number of males per females, males' marriages appear to be less stable and more likely to involve natives and highly educated spouses, while women are less likely to work and, for those in high endogamous groups, marry more immigrants. (JEL C78, D83, J12, J16, N31)

Suggested Citation

  • Jeanne Lafortune, 2013. "Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 151-178, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:5:y:2013:i:2:p:151-78
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.5.2.151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/app.5.2.151
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/data/2011-0209_data.zip
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/app/2011-0209_app.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/ds/0502/2011-0209_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • 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
    • N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2013) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:5:y:2013:i:2:p:151-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.