Marriage and Cohabitation in Canada

Marriage matching functions are used to study how marital patterns change when population supplies change. A behavioral marriage matching function with spillover effects is used to rationalize marriage and cohabitation behavior in contemporary Canada. The model non-parametrically identifies the systematic gains to marriage and cohabitation for a couple relative to remaining single. These gains are the primitives of the model and hence invariant to changes in the number of single men and women in the marriage market. We use the estimated model to quantify the impacts of gender differences in mortality rates and the baby boom on observed behavior. The higher mortality rate of men makes men more scarce relative to women. We show that this modestly reduced (increased) the welfare of women (men) in the marriage market. On the other hand, the baby boom increased the net gains to entering the marriage market for older men and lowered the net gains for middle aged women. ∗Contact information: Eugene Choo, Department of Economics, University of Toronto, 150 St. George Street, M5S 3G7 Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Email: [email protected] †We thank Alina Rahman and Icarus Lee for research assistance on this paper. We benefitted from comments from Joanne Roberts. Siow also gratefully acknowledges financial support from SSHRC of Canada.