IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0271.html

Male Wage Rates and Marital Status

Author

Listed:
  • Lawrence W. Kenny

Abstract

Numerous studies have found that married men earn consider-ably more than single men of the same education, experience, etc. There are several possible explanations of this phenomenon. Recent theoretical developments in the economics of marriage predict that males with higher wage rates have a greater gain from marriage and are therefore more likely to marry. Alternatively, one of the benefits of marriage is specialization in the labor force; married men spend more hours in the labor force than single males and thus have a greater incentive to invest in human capital. The empirical work in this paper suggests that a large fraction of the unexplained wage differential between married males and unmarried males may be attributable to the former explanation.

Suggested Citation

  • Lawrence W. Kenny, 1978. "Male Wage Rates and Marital Status," NBER Working Papers 0271, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0271.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S & Landes, Elisabeth M & Michael, Robert T, 1977. "An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(6), pages 1141-1187, December.
    2. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    3. Parsons, Donald O, 1977. "Health, Family Structure, and Labor Supply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 703-712, September.
    4. Polachek, Solomon William, 1975. "Differences in Expected Post-school Investments as a Determinant of Market Wage Differentials," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 16(2), pages 451-470, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:1139-1181 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michelle Sheran Sylvester, 2007. "The Career and Family Choices of Women: A Dynamic Analysis of Labor Force Participation, Schooling, Marriage and Fertility Decisions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(3), pages 367-399, July.
    2. Rebecca Kippen & Bruce Chapman & Peng Yu, 2010. "What's love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability," CEPR Discussion Papers 631, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    3. Davi B. Costa, 2021. "Benefits of marriage as a search strategy," Papers 2108.04885, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    4. André de Palma & Nathalie Picard & Ignacio Inoa, 2014. "Discrete choice decision-making with multiple decision-makers within the household," Chapters, in: Stephane Hess & Andrew Daly (ed.), Handbook of Choice Modelling, chapter 16, pages 363-382, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Alfred Galichon & Scott Kominers & Simon Weber, 2014. "An Empirical Framework for Matching with Imperfectly Transferable Utility," Working Papers hal-03460155, HAL.
    6. Frimmel, Wolfgang & Halla, Martin & Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf, 2024. "How does parental divorce affect children’s long-term outcomes?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    7. Gillian Hewitson, 2001. "A Survey of Feminist Economics," Working Papers 2001.01, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    8. Ahituv, Avner & Lerman, Robert I., 2005. "How Do Marital Status, Wage Rates, and Work Commitment Interact?," IZA Discussion Papers 1688, IZA Network @ LISER.
    9. Vaillant, Nicolas G. & Harrant, Valérie, 2008. "Determinants of the likelihood of finding the right partner in an arranged marriage: Evidence from a French matchmaking agency," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 657-671, April.
    10. Ragui Assaad & Caroline Krafft, 2014. "The Economics of Marriage in North Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-067, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. C. Simon Fan & Hon‐Kwong Lui, 2004. "Extramarital Affairs, Marital Satisfaction, and Divorce: Evidence from Hong Kong," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(4), pages 442-452, October.
    12. Dávid Erát, 2021. "Educational assortative mating and the decline of hypergamy in 27 European countries: An examination of trends through cohorts," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(7), pages 157-188.
    13. Peter Thompson, 2008. "Desperate Housewives? Communication Difficulties and the Dynamics of Marital (un)Happiness," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1640-1669, October.
    14. Gonzalez, Libertad, 2007. "The effect of benefits on single motherhood in Europe," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 393-412, June.
    15. Yunhee Chang & Ki Lee, 2006. "Household Debt and Marital Instability: Evidence from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 675-691, December.
    16. Dan Anderberg & Helmut Rainer & Kerstin Roeder, 2016. "Family-Specific Investments and Divorce: A Theory of Dynamically Inconsistent Household Behavior," CESifo Working Paper Series 5996, CESifo.
    17. Libertad González Luna, 2005. "The determinants of the prevalence of single mothers: A cross-country analysis," Economics Working Papers 876, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    18. Sebastian Negrusa & Brighita Negrusa & James Hosek, 2014. "Gone to war: have deployments increased divorces?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 473-496, April.
    19. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4u07fqmc7q90d9u66sk1a7qgko is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Nielsen, Helena Skyt & Svarer, Michael, 2006. "Educational Homogamy: Preferences or Opportunities?," IZA Discussion Papers 2271, IZA Network @ LISER.
    21. Kelly Bedard & Olivier Deschênes, 2005. "Sex Preferences, Marital Dissolution, and the Economic Status of Women," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(2).

    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:nbr:nberwo:0271. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.