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 …

theory predicts that most of the gender age difference at first marriage will persist even if the gender wage-gap disappears … value of their current match exceeds that of remaining single. If both partners propose, the meeting ends up in a marriage … ages of first-time brides and grooms. We show that modeling the marriage decision in this simple way is sufficient to …

We use elementary game-theoretical concepts to compare domestic equilibria with and without marriage. In particular, we … examine the effects of marriage legislation, matrimonial property regime, and divorce court sentencing practice, on the … decision to marry, and on the choice of game conditional on marriage. We find that, in the absence of social stigma or legal …

This paper explores the role of marriage when markets are incomplete so that individuals cannot diversify their … married hedges are the ones most likely to be caught short with too little love in order to save a marriage in the event of an … means and volatilities of partners' incomes are also derived from the theory and tested. …

This paper studies the effect of child care provision on family structure. We present a model of a marriage market with …

This paper provides a first microeconomic foundation for the institution of marriage. Based on a model of reproduction …, mating, and parental investment in children, we argue that marriage serves the purpose of attenuating the risk of mating …, marriage circumscribes female infidelity and mate poaching among men, which reduces average levels of paternal uncertainty in …

This paper maps key indicators of household structure across all countries for all countries of the expanded European … Union except Malta. As well as presenting statistics which take the entire household as the unit of analysis, we also focus … on groups which are particularly interesting in terms of social policy, and for whom household composition may be …

older siblings suggest that the policy affects the whole household, not just targeted family members. …