This paper investigates how the adoption of unilateral divorce affects the gains from marriage and who marries whom. Exploiting variation in the timing of adoption across the US states, I first show that unilateral divorce increases assortative matching among newlyweds. To explain the link between divorce laws and matching patterns, I specify an equilibrium model of household formation, labor s...

This paper examines marriage market equilibrium when allocation is determined by bargaining in marriage rather than binding agreements between prospective spouses. We view sorting in the marriage market and allocation in marriage as a two-stage game in which prospective spouses, when they meet in the marriage market, foresee the allocation that would emerge from bargaining in marriage, but are ...

Using data from two surveys in three counties where the prevalence of uxorilocal marriage differs greatly, this paper analyzes the effects of marriage form, individual, family and social factors on age at first marriage and spousal age difference. The results show that, under the Chinese patrilineal joint family system, compared with the dominant virilocal marriage form, uxorilocal marriage sig...

BACKGROUND Although associations between drinking behavior and marital status are well documented, timing of marital transitions as a function of alcohol use or disorder has received limited empirical attention. METHODS We examine the relationship between lifetime history of alcohol dependence (AD) and timing and survival of first marriages in a sample of 3,575 female and 1,845 male adult Aus...

BACKGROUND Marriage histories are a valuable data source for investigating nuptiality. While researchers typically acknowledge the problems associated with their use, it is unknown to what extent these problems occur and how marriage analyses are affected. OBJECTIVE This paper seeks to investigate the quality of marriage histories by measuring levels of misreporting, examining the characteris...

vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Background 1 Study objectives 2 Study setting 3 Methods 3 Chapter 2: Early marriage: Preferences and realities 5 Age at marriage: Girls’ preferences 5 Age at marriage: Parents’ preferences 6 Age at marriage: The reality 7 Chapter 3: Factors underlying early marriage 9 Poverty and the burden of marriage-related expenses 9 Concerns about finding a suitable groom 9 ‘Ev...