Full Citation

Title: Accounting for Age in Marital Search Decisions

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: The quality of spouse a woman is willing to marry varies signifi cantly over her lifecycle, first increasing rapidly then falling more slowly as she ages. Men have a similar but less pronounced pattern. We document this and other facts on the quality of chosen spouses depending on the age of marriage. We then interpret these facts in the framework of a non-stationary sequential search model, which points to declining frequency of marriage opportunities and declining utility from unmarried life as the main determinants of these patterns. For men, only the former seems to be responsible.

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Authors: Butler, Matthew; Akin, S.Nuray; Platt, Brennan C.

Publisher: Brigham Young University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage

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