IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genres/10132.html

Will You Marry Me? A Perspective on the Gender Gap

Author

Listed:
  • Volij, Oscar
  • Elul, Ronel
  • Silva-Reus, Jose Angel

Abstract

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of the gender wage gap. The difference in earnings is a consequence of a demographic regularity--that men tend to marry younger women--which may limit women's labor mobility and, hence, their average earnings. However, couples are always free not to marry, and do so only if it is in each's self-interest. The intrafamily allocation of resources is determined via non-cooperative bargaining; this leads to interesting interactions between the game played by husband and wife on the one hand, and the competitive environment in which they are immersed on the other. The predictions resulting from this model's interplay between locational choice and family bargaining are consistent with the observation that the increasing stress put by women on their careers over the past 30 years has been contemporaneous with reductions in both marriage rates and the gender gap. The model provides insight into the consequences of this for the relative welfare of men and women, as well as exploring its wider economic implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Volij, Oscar & Elul, Ronel & Silva-Reus, Jose Angel, 2002. "Will You Marry Me? A Perspective on the Gender Gap," Staff General Research Papers Archive 10132, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:isu:genres:10132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Elisabeth Hermann Frederiksen, 2006. "An Equilibrium Analysis of the Gender Wage Gap," EPRU Working Paper Series 06-08, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    2. Pavlo Blavatskyy, 2018. "Why do young women marry old men?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 85(3), pages 509-525, October.
    3. Miriam Beblo & Julio Robledo, 2008. "The wage gap and the leisure gap for double-earner couples," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 281-304, April.
    4. Miriam Beblo & Julio Robledo, 2008. "The wage gap and the leisure gap for double-earner couples," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 281-304, April.
    5. Dekel, Eddie & Pauzner, Ady, 2011. "Job satisfaction and the wage gap," Foerder Institute for Economic Research Working Papers 275770, Tel-Aviv University > Foerder Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Graciela CHICHILNISKY & Elisabeth HERMANN FREDERIKSEN, 2008. "An equilibrium analysis of the gender wage gap," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 147(4), pages 297-320, December.
    7. Bowles, Hannah Riley & McGinn, Kathleen L., 2007. "Untapped Potential in the Study of Negotiation and Gender Inequality in Organizations," Working Paper Series rwp07-062, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.

    More about this item

    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

    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:isu:genres:10132. 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: Curtis Balmer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiasus.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.