Using an equilibrium model of inter-linked frictional labour and marriage markets, we establish the existence of male marriage premium within a given productivity group, as well as a clear ranking of premia across different groups. We find supporting evidence using Chinese data.

We study the effect of marriage on the stability of formal partnerships exploiting same-sex marriage legalization in the Netherlands as a natural experiment. Same-sex marriage legalization allowed registered partnerships to be transformed into marriage. Since registered partnerships and...

This paper analyzes the status of being currently divorced among European and Mexican immigrants in the U.S., among themselves and in comparison to the native born of the same ancestries. The data are for males and females age 18 to 55, who married only once, in the 2010-2014 American Community...

We study how the migration decision of young women in rural China is shaped by the return arrangement and opportunities of college education. Women outnumbered men in young rural-urban migrants in the early 2000s, but the surplus of young women has recently disappeared. We propose that the...

This paper shows that globalization has far-reaching implications for the economy's fertility rate and family structure because it influences work-life balance. Employing population register data on all births, marriages, and divorces together with employer-employee linked data for Denmark, we...

Economists increasingly accept that social norms have powerful effects on human behavior and outcomes. In recent history, one norm widely adhered to in most developed nations has been for men to be the primary breadwinner within mixed-gender households. As women have entered the labor market in...

Marriage is a central stage in the transition to adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper builds on the existing literature on the effect of marriage on women's employment in MENA. Besides examining how different types of work are affected by early marriage (defined as...

Do policies and institutions that promote women's economic empowerment have a long-term impact on intimate partner violence? We address this question by exploiting a natural experiment of history in Cameroon. From the end of WWI until 1961, the western territories of today's Cameroon were...

This paper investigates career choices of women who marry high-income men. We find that women married to men in the top of the income distribution are more likely to enter self-employment, which is also associated with a lower income. This can be interpreted as a career choice that produces a...

In most of the developed world, skilled women marry at a lower rate than unskilled women. We document heterogeneity across countries in how the marriage gap for skilled women has evolved over time. As labor market opportunities for women have improved, the marriage gap has been growing in some...