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Title: Women's Income and Marriage Markets in the United States: Evidence from the Civil War Pension

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: The role of economic opportunities for women is largely neglected in accounts of 19th century American marriage patterns. However, they are considered very important for the late 20th century. The principle behind this is simple: women will choose to substitute away from marriage as alternatives become more attractive. Providing evidence for this mechanism is challenging, though, because of the inherent feedback between choices regarding marriage and career. In this paper, I provide evidence of a causal effect of womens income on their preferences for marriage during the years following the Civil War. I do this by analyzing the effect of Civil War pension income on the behavior of Union Army widows. Eligibility for a widows pension depended only on her first husbands military service and the circumstances of his death, so it should be uncorrelated with the widows own characteristics. Moreover, pensions terminated upon remarriage. Thus, pensions should have affected marital outcomes only insofar as they altered womens preferences for marriage. I draw a sample of widows from the Union Army database created by the Center for Population Economics, and I collect information about these widows pensions and marriage histories from the Civil War pension files at the National Archives in Washington, DC. My estimates indicate that, over a five year period, receiving a pension lowered the rate of remarriage by 55 percent, which implies an increase in the median time to remarriage of approximately two years. This suggests that 19th century women were willing to substitute away from marriage if the alternatives were favorable enough. As well as providing new information about 19th century marriage markets, this sheds light on the patterns we observe during the 20th century. In particular, it suggests that a willingness to substitute outside economic opportunities for marriage is rooted in fundamental preferences, not a new behavior brought about by changing social norms.

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Authors: Salisbury, Laura

Conference Name: 2012 Canadian Network of Economic History Conference

Publisher Location: Banff, Alberta, Canada

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Family and Marriage, Gender

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