Marriage: Cause or mere indicator of future earnings growth?

Marriage: Cause or Mere Indicator of Future Earnings Growth?

The hypothesis that marriage increases men's earnings has contributed to legislative support for the Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI). However, previous studies of this phenomenon have not controlled for many relevant characteristics that select men into marriage, nor have they focused on low-income, unmarried fathers-the population targeted by HMI. We use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbe...

Social dominance orientation: Cause or ‘mere effect’?

Marriage and Earnings

Uncovering the determinants of earnings is an important and well-researched area in labor economics. In studies of race or sex discrimination, it is imperative to use statistical methods that control for various factors so that the researcher can obtain an unbiased measure of discrimination. Another area that has attracted interest is the interaction of wages and union membership. Again, contro...

Does Growth Cause Happiness, or Does Happiness Cause Growth?

The two quotes above suggest alternate ideas about the sources of happiness. The first (written around AD 180) is nn Aristotelian notion. Happiness is a way of living, not a state. The second quote (written some 1500 years later) suggests ideas about the sources of happiness perhaps more akin to the way that we tend to view [hem today. Happiness is about conviviality, warmth. food (and perhaps ...

Marriage: Past, Present, Future?

Today, more than one third of children are born to unmarried mothers in a number of Western Countries. Evidently, activities formerly confined to the realms of marriage are no longer so. Does marriage have a future or is it condemned to the scrap heap of history? And does it matter? Arguably, to answer such questions we need to have a grasp on what marriage is. To that end, I will discuss legal...