Marriage, Partnership, Cohabitation and Sexual Orientation: What Males Gain a Wage Premium?

We develop a model of partnership and marriage based upon individual abilities and match-specific returns. A theoretical result is that marriage and same-sex partnership positively select more able individuals, while the effect of unmarried heterosexual partnership is ambiguous. We conduct empirical analysis with a unique new data source on marital status, partnership and sexual orientation of academics and administrators at British universities. We find a statistically significant male marriage premium, an insignificant positive effect of heterosexual unmarried partnership, and no partnership return to male homosexuals. This suggests that selection may play a limited role in the marriage premium. We also provide results on cohabiting versus non-cohabiting partners, and on the academic versus administrative side of universities. JEL Classification: J12, J16, J30, J45.