Recent descriptive work suggests the type of college education (field or institution) is an important but neglected pathway through which individuals sort into homogeneous marriages. These descriptive studies raise the question of why college graduates are so likely to marry someone within their...

In the marriage market, families make investments on behalf of their young so that they are able to form a household with their preferred partner. We analyze marriage markets in a central region of China between about 1300 and 1850 through the lens of a model of marriage matching and...

Although it is generally blind with respect to race, the federal individual income tax can create racial disparities when factors that affect tax liability are associated with race. We provide new evidence on racial differences in marriage penalties and bonuses in the income tax, using data from...

Ever since Lucy Stone decided to retain her surname at marriage in 1855, women in America have tried to do the same. But their numbers were extremely low until the 1970s. The increased age at first marriage, rising numbers with professional degrees and Ph.D.'s, the diffusion of 'the Pill,' state...

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially around 1970 and the age at first marriage among all U.S. college graduate women soared just after 1972. We explore the relationship between these two changes and how each was shaped by the...

Modern personnel practices, social consensus, and the Depression acted in concert to delay the emergence of married women in the American economy through an institution known as the "marriage bar." Marriage bars were policies adopted by firms and local school boards, from about the early 1900's...

This paper analyzes cohort marriage patterns in the United States in order to determine whether declining rates of first marriage are due to changes in the timing of marriage, the incidence of marriage, or both. Parametric models, which are well-suited to the analysis of censored or truncated...

This paper seeks to explain the recent rise in U.S. divorce rates using an economic framework. Annual time series data from1920 to 1974 are used in the empirical analysis. The estimated equation tracks the actual series quite well. It attributes the recent increase in divorce to improved...

We document the time-series of employment rates and hours worked per employed by married couples in the US and seven European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK) from the early 1980s through 2016. Relying on a model of joint household labor supply...

The extent to which like-with like marry is particularly important for inequality as well as for the outcomes of children that result from the union. In this paper we discuss approaches to the measurement of changes in assortative mating. We derive two key conditions that a well-defined measure...