Full Citation
Title: Essays in Labor Economics on Marriage, Education, and Labor Supply
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2014
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Abstract: This dissertation seeks to understand two main issues. The first issue concerns changes in the gender gaps in college attendance and choice of majors between 1960 and 2010. The second main issue concerns changes in the marriage rate in the US since the early twentieth century. The main objective of Chapters 1 and 2 is to answer the following two questions about educational choices: Why do women today invest in a college education at much higher rates than men, whereas fifty years ago men graduated more frequently? And given their high college attendance rates today, why do women continue to select disproportionately into lower-paying majors, with almost no gender convergence along this margin since the mid-1980s? In Chapter 1, I document first that changes in returns to skill over time and gender differences in wage premiums across majors cannot explain the observed gender gaps in educational choices. I then provide reduced-form evidence that two factors help explain the observed gender gaps: first, college degrees provide insurance against very low income for women, especially in case of divorce; second, majors differ substantially in the degree of "work-family flexibility" they offer, such as the size of wage penalties for temporary reductions in labor supply. Based on this reduced-form evidence, in Chapter 2 I construct and estimate a dynamic structural model of marriage, educational choices, and lifetime labor supply. I use the model to analyze the contribution of changes in wages and . . .
Url: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/15b6r7d7
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Authors: Bronson, Mary Ann
Institution: UCLA
Department: Economics
Advisor: Maurizio Mazzocco
Degree: PhD
Publisher Location: Los Angelos
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Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other
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