We study empirically whether there is scope for parents to shape the economic preferences and attitudes of their children through purposeful investments. We exploit information on the risk and trust attitudes of parents and their children, as well as rich information about parental efforts in...

Informal eldercare is often supplied by family members, more so in Asia than in the West. Children and their parents as well as members of adjacent generations linked by marriage (in-laws) are modeled as self-interested agents offering or responding to material incentives. A first implication...

With a representative survey of 1,214 participants conducted in early 2022, this study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on marriage and childbirth in Iran. The results of the empirical investigation using logistic regressions suggest that the experience of unemployment due to the...

This paper documents that changes in assortative mating patterns over the last four decades along the dimensions of age, ethnicity and religion are not responsible for the increasing marital stability in Austria. Quite the contrary, without the rise in the age at marriage, divorce rates would be...

Why do some U.S. states have higher levels of marital formation than others? This paper introduces an economic model wherein a state's representative individual may choose to marry in order to diversity his or her idiosyncratic income risk. The paper demonstrates that such a diversification...

This paper documents that changes in assortative mating patterns over the last four decades along the dimensions of age, ethnicity, religion and education are not responsible for the increasing marital instability in Austria. Quite the contrary, without the rise in the age at marriage, divorce...

Why do some U.S. states have higher levels of marital formation than others? This paper introduces an economic model wherin a state s representative individual may choose to marry in order to diversify his or her idiosyncratic income risk. The paper demonstrates that such a diversification...

We investigate the effect of own and partner locus of control (LOC) on marital satisfaction using household longitudinal data from Australia. We also examine how the evolution of marital satisfaction over time depends on LOC. LOC indicates whether one believes that one's outcomes are more under...

This paper explores the role of marriage when markets are incomplete so that individuals cannot diversify their idiosyncratic labor income risk. Ceteris paribus, an individual would prefer to marry a hedge (i.e. a spouse whose income is negatively correlated with her own) as it raises her...

We investigate how the marital age gap affects the evolution of marital satisfaction over the duration of marriage using household panel data from Australia. We find that men tend to be more satisfied with younger wives and less satisfied with older wives. Interestingly, women likewise tend to...