Full Citation

Title: On the Marriage Wage Premium

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2020

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: It has long been observed that married men earn higher wages than their single counterparts. In this paper, we document that, in the last decades, an analogous pattern has emerged for women. Married women experienced a wage penalty until the 1990s, whereas nowadays there is a sizable premium. To estimate the causal effect of marriage on wages presents three main challenges: a significant part of the female population does not participate in employment (sample-selection bias), there might be some variables that are relevant for both wages and the propensity to marry that are not observable (omitted-variable bias), and wages may also affect marriage decisions (simultaneity bias). We apply a variety of techniques, along with a novel instrument based on local social norms towards marriage, to show that marriage has a positive causal effect on wages for both genders. We also show that the effect of marriage on wages is heterogeneous between and within genders. Further, we present evidence that the main hypotheses discussed in the literature to explain the marriage wage premium for men, namely within-household specialization and employer discrimination, have little support in the data.

Url: https://www.arnau.eu/MWP.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: McConnell, Brendon; Valladeres-Esteban, Arnau

Publisher: University of Southampton

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

Countries: