We document a negative association between nonmarital childbearing and the subsequent likelihood of first marriage in the United States, controlling for a variety of potentially confounding influences. Nonmarital childbearing does not appear to be driven by low expectations of future marriage. Rather, it tends to be an unexpected and unwanted event, whose effects on a woman's subsequent likelih...

This paper examines the determinants of human and physical capital at marriage. Using detailed data from rural Ethiopia, we Þnd ample evidence of assortative matching at marriage. Assets brought to marriage are distributed in a highly unequal manner. Sorting operates at a variety of levels — wealth, schooling, and work experience — that cannot be summarized into a single additive index. For Þrs...

We develop and estimate an empirical collective model with endogenous marriage formation, participation, and family labor supply. Intrahousehold transfers arise endogenously as the transfers that clear the marriage market. The intra-household allocation can be recovered from observations on marriage decisions. Introducing the marriage market in the collective model allows us to independently es...

Widening gaps in marriage rates have received a great deal of attention in recent years, focusing on the availability of marriageable men in the local marriage market. At the same time, cohabitation has increased in prevalence, playing a role in declining marriage rates. This paper extends marriage market arguments to the formation of both cohabiting and marital unions, using contextual data at...

—This paper explores new roles that traditionally rural kinship networks organized around the marriage institution might play in improving labor market outcomes in urban Africa. Using new data from Kisumu, Kenya, and controlling for selection into marriage, we find that marriage significantly increases employment levels and incomes in our sample of migrants. At the same time, marriage increases...

A large number of aged Americans depend on Social Security benefits to stay out of poverty. Those who have very small Social Security checks, or who have none at all, rely heavily on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for much of their income. Most aged SSI recipients have earnings histories to explain their lack of adequate Social Security benefits. Information on these histories w...

This study draws from agenda-setting and issue priming theories to develop hypotheses about how state-level ballot propositions may affect presidential elections. We propose that ballot measures prime voters to evaluate candidates in terms of policy questions placed on their state ballot. We test if concerns about gay marriage in 2004 had greater salience for voters in states where proposals to...

Japan is one of few developed countries in which marriage and higher earning potential among women are negatively associated. As the proportion of births occurring outside of marriage remains low in Japan, fertility is still significantly influenced by marriage trends, which are in turn influenced by societal expectations regarding the marriageability of educated women. Previous studies have su...

Many studies have established that married people fare better than their never-married counterparts in terms of psychological well-being. It is still unclear, however, whether this advantage is due primarily to beneficial effects of marriage or to the selection of psychologically healthier individuals into marriage. This study employs data from both waves of the National Survey of Families and ...

Although support for same-sex marriage has grown dramatically over the past decade, public opinion remains markedly divided. Here, we propose that the political divide over same-sex marriage represents a deeper divide between conflicting mating strategies. Specifically, we propose that opposition to same-sex marriage can be explained in terms of (a) individual differences in short-term mating o...