We document that, over the 20th century, age at first marriage followed a U-shaped pattern, while the gender education … model where educational and marriage decisions are endogenous. Two key assumptions are made: marriage requires a fixed cost … consistent with our empirical result that exogenous delays in marriage age caused by minimum age laws decreased the educational …

Marriage used to be practically universal, but now persists as an institution for only some groups, while others choose … non-marital fertility. This paper posits that if one role of marriage is to insure one partner's investment in children … enforcement outside of marriage have reduced the relative strength of the marital contract, the division of assets, particularly …