IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/demeco/v82y2016i3p241-279_1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Credible Commitments And Marriage: When The Homemaker Gets Her Share At Divorce

Author

Listed:
  • Wong, Ho-Po Crystal

Abstract

A variety of states in the United States have adopted the “homemaking provision” in their divorce laws since the 1980s. The provision requires judges to recognize homemakers’ contribution to their marriages in dividing marital properties at divorce. I model the marital decisions of couples as a sequential game, in which the potential wife’s decision in whether to marry and specialize in home production depends on whether she is legally protected by the homemaking provision, as the law would reinforce her post-divorce property rights and therefore increase her bargaining power within the marriage. I use the variation in the timing of the passage of the homemaking provision to identify its effect on marriage. I find that the provision substantially increases marriages using both state- and individual-level data.

Suggested Citation

  • Wong, Ho-Po Crystal, 2016. "Credible Commitments And Marriage: When The Homemaker Gets Her Share At Divorce," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(3), pages 241-279, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:demeco:v:82:y:2016:i:3:p:241-279_1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2054089216000092/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bansak, Cynthia & Grossbard, Shoshana & Wong, Ho-Po Crystal, 2022. "Mothers’ caregiving during COVID: The impact of marital property laws on women’s labor force status," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    2. Fernández-Kranz, Daniel & Roff, Jennifer Louise, 2021. "Commitments and the Marital Match: The Effect of Alimony Reform on Assortative Matching," IZA Discussion Papers 14877, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    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:cup:demeco:v:82:y:2016:i:3:p:241-279_1. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/dem .

    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.