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Title: The Unequal Gains from Racial Desegregation in the US Marriage Market

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2022

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Abstract: Interracial marriages have increased in the US over the past several decades, but the trends differ across race, gender, and education groups. This suggests that racial desegregation in the marriage market may not have improved marriage prospects of all groups. This paper studies why some groups have gained more from marital desegregation than others over the past four decades. To this end, I build a transferable utility matching model to define and estimate the welfare gains from marital desegregation by comparing the equilibrium rates of singlehood in the observed marriage market with those in a completely segregated marriage market. I find that among Blacks and Whites, college-educated men gained more than their female and lower-educated male counterparts. To understand why, I implement a decomposition method based on quantitative comparative statics to examine the separate roles of the changes in population distribution and the changes in marital surplus. I find that the rise in the welfare gains for college-educated Black men is largely driven by the increase in the joint surplus from marriage with college-educated White women. Other Black men and women did not benefit as much from any change in the marital surplus, implying that race relations have not improved in the marriage market except for the most educated Black men. I also find that the rise in welfare gains for college-educated White men is mechanically driven by the increase in the number of college-educated Asian and Hispanic women. Simulation results suggest that progress toward racial integration in the marriage market would significantly reduce the rates of single-hood among Blacks.

Url: https://yukyungkoh.github.io/files/Koh_JMP_latest.pdf

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Authors: Koh, Yu Kyung

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Race and Ethnicity

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