In most Western economies, the flourishing of the Welfare State has coincided with a decline of the role of the family … the informal safety net in a period when social protection was provided by the family. Once the State started offering … suitable alternatives, the taboo was no longer expedient, and was dropped. For the same reasons, marriage has become less …

This paper studies the effect of child care provision on family structure. We present a model of a marriage market with … children and spousal specialization in home production of public goods and child care. We then study how child care provision …

Pooling microdata from five Australian censuses, I explore the relationship between child gender and divorce. By … contrast with the United States, I find no evidence that the gender of the first child has a significant impact on the decision … to marry or divorce. However, among two-child families, parents with two children of the same sex are 1.7 percentage …

women. Historically, women with more education have been the least likely to marry and have children, but this marriage gap …. College educated women marry later, have fewer children, are less likely to view marriage as “financial security”, are happier … has eroded as the returns to marriage have changed. Marriage and remarriage rates have risen for women with a college …

marriage and with lower savings rates in the presence of diseconomies of marriage. In the context of traditional gender roles …This paper presents an inter-temporal model of individual behavior with uncertainty about marriage and divorce and … which accommodates the possible presence of economies or diseconomies of scale from marriage. We show that a scenario of …

-plus marriage; and resident children born before marriage. … a host of public policy outcomes being significantly affected by family breakdown. This paper improves our understanding … household income; husband’s unemployment and perceived financial stress; young age at marriage; separation of parents; second …

Decisions concerning marriage, fertility, participation, and the education of children are explained using a two …-stage game-theoretical model. The paper examines the effects of (i) family law (cost of obtaining a divorce, alimony … assignment of property rights over total goods and assets acquired within marriage, (iii) enforceability of bride-price contracts …

of an efficiency loss. Efficiency can be restored through suitably designed marriage contracts because they can provide …) use of marriage is affected by the possibility of divorce. …