involved in the legislative process), we show that an expansion in the welfare state increases the fertility, marriage, and … divorce rates with a quantitatively stronger effect on the marriage rate. We conclude that the welfare state supports family … formation. Nevertheless, we also find that the welfare state decouples marriage and fertility, and therefore, alters the …

Children can be considered as a marriage-specific investment that increases the value of the marriage, making a divorce …, for the United States, to investigate the relation between fertility and marriage instability. In our model of marriage … children conceived during first marriage. Our results indicate that the presence of children significantly reduces the …

Since 1950 the sources of the gains from marriage have changed radically. As the educational attainment of women … specialization in work weakened. The primary source of the gains to marriage shifted from the production of household services and … commodities to investment in children. For some, these changes meant that marriage was no longer worth the costs of limited …

In this paper, we study the effects of immigration on natives' marriage, fertility, and family formation across US … aggregate migration flows, we find that immigration raised marriage rates, the probability of having children, and the …