Full Citation
Title: Marriage, Fertility, and Labor Market Prospects in the United States, 1960-2000
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2005
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: Over the past forty years a tremendous number of women have entered the labor market, removing stay-home motherhood as the most dominant female occupation. The linkage between the change in the labor market and change in family structure has drawn a lot of attention from social scientists, and it is on this linkage that this analysis is focused.An essential dimension of this changing behavior is the sharp rise in out-ofwedlockchildbearing. The central issue of non-married motherhood is more related tothe diminishing willingness to marry than a changing attitude toward fertility. In asetting where individuals choose marriage because of the gains from joint production ofchild quality as well as the division of labor, the declining gains from specialization formen influence potential spouse selection. Men and women with fewer labor marketprospects become less desirable, and consequently a marriage market with more positiveassortative mating will be observed.The increase in female labor market participation is larger for highly-educatedwomen but the decrease in marriage rates is more characteristic of less-educated womenover this period. What drives these changes can be explained by using a simple economic theory, the fundamental concept of which is that couples with lower labormarket prospects also face lower gains from marriage because of the increases in femalemalerelative wages in the less-educated and black groups. A narrowing of the gapbetween male and female wages would reduce the gains from division of labor andlower the incentive to marry. In addition, when the marriage market becomes morepositively assorted, low educated men and women are less likely to marry each other.Our empirical results indicate an increase in the homogeneity of wages betweenspouses over this period regardless of whether we control for education. In particular,black couples are more positively assorted than white couples although the trendconverges by the end of the century. We also show that the marriage market is tiltedtowards better-educated men and women over the period. These findings are consistentwith the theory which explains why single motherhood is more concentrated among less educatedwomen.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Kuo, Yu-Chen
Institution: Texas A&M University
Department: Economics
Advisor: Dr. Donald Deere
Degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Publisher Location: College Station, TX
Pages:
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
Countries: