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Are All The Good Men Married? Uncovering the Sources of the Marital Wage Premium

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Author Info
Kate Antonovics (University of California, San Diego)
Robert Town (University of Wisconsin)

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Abstract

A longstanding and yet unsettled question in labor economics is: does marriage cause men's wages to rise? Cross-sectional wage studies consistently find that married men earn significantly higher wages than do men who are not currently married. However, it is well-known that inferring causal relationships from crosssectional analysis is inappropriate because of the biases introduced by unobserved heterogeneity. As a means of circumventing this problem, this paper uses data on identical twins to control for unobserved heterogeneity. Our estimates suggest that marriage increases men's wages by as much as 27%, and that little, if any, of the cross-sectional relationship between marriage and wages is due to selection. In addition, we find little evidence that the marital-wage premium is a consequence of household specialization.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics, UC San Diego in its series University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series with number 2003-15.

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Date of creation: 29 Sep 2004
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Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:2003-15

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Keywords: Marriage; Wage Premium;

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  1. Alan Krueger & Orley Ashenfelter, 1992. "Estimates of the Economic Return to Schooling from a New Sample of Twins," NBER Working Papers 4143, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Cornwell, Christopher & Rupert, Peter, 1997. "Unobservable Individual Effects, Marriage and the Earnings of Young Men," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(2), pages 285-94, April.
  3. Angrist, Joshua D. & Krueger, Alan B., 1999. "Empirical strategies in labor economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1277-1366 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Leslie S. Stratton, 2002. "Examining the Wage Differential for Married and Cohabiting Men," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 199-212, April.
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Alison Booth & Jeff Frank, 2008. "Marriage, partnership and sexual orientation: a study of British university academics and administrators," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 409-422, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Martin Binder & Alex Coad, 2009. "An Examination of the Dynamics of Happiness Using Vector Autoregressions," Papers on Economics and Evolution 2009-04, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Evolutionary Economics Group. [Downloadable!]
  3. Madeline Zavodny, 2008. "Is there a ‘marriage premium’ for gay men?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 369-389, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Katherin Barg & Miriam Beblo, 2008. "Does Marriage Pay More than Cohabitation?: Selection and Specialization Effects on Male Wages in Germany," SOEPpapers 82, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). [Downloadable!]
  5. Tara Watson & Sara McLanahan, 2009. "Marriage Meets the Joneses: Relative Income, Identity, and Marital Status," NBER Working Papers 14773, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  6. Esfandiar Maasoumi & Daniel L. Millimet & Dipanwita Sarkar, 2008. "Who Benefits from Marriage?," Emory Economics 0807, Department of Economics, Emory University (Atlanta). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Joyce P. Jacobsen, 2008. "Accommodating Families," Wesleyan Economics Working Papers 2008-004, Wesleyan University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  8. Christopher H. Wheeler & Elizabeth A. La Jeunesse, 2007. "Neighborhood income inequality," Working Papers 2006-039, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
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