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Title: On Population Structure and Marriage Dynamics

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2010

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Abstract: I develop an equilibrium, two-sided search model of marriage with endogenous populationgrowth to study the interaction between fertility, the age structure of the population and theage at first marriage of men and women. Within a simple two-period overlapping generationmodel I show that, given an increase of the desired number of children, age at marriage isaffected through two different channels. First, as population growth increases, the agestructure of the population produces a thicker market for young people, inducing earlymarriages. The second channel comes from differential fecundity: if the desired number ofchildren is not feasible for older women, women tend to marry younger and men older, withsingle men outnumbering single women in equilibrium. Using an extended version of themodel to a finite number of periods and fertility data, I show that two mechanisms describedabove may have acted as persistence mechanisms after the U.S baby boom. I show thatdemographic transitional dynamics after the baby boom may account for approximately a23% of the increase in mens age of marriage between 1985 and 2009, albeit the impact onwomens age is small.

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Authors: Giolito, Eugenio

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Publication Number: 5224

Institution: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

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Publisher Location: Bonn, Germany

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage

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