IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/jespps/v36y2009i6p552-570.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does marriage pay more than cohabitation?

Author

Listed:
  • Katherin Barg
  • Miriam Beblo

Abstract

Purpose - Empirical research has unambiguously shown that married men receive higher wages than unmarried, whereas a wage premium for cohabiters is not as evident yet. This paper aims to exploit the observed difference between the marital and the cohabiting wage premium in Germany to draw conclusions about the sources, typically explained by specialisation (e.g. husbands being more productive because their wives take over household chores) or selection (high earnings potentials being more attractive on the marriage market). Design/methodology/approach - The paper analyzes the cohabiting and the marital wage premium in Germany using a shifting panel design for marriages and move‐ins from 1993 to 2004 in the German Socio‐Economic Panel. With non‐parametric matching models men who get married (treatment group I) are matched with cohabiting respectively single men (control groups) and men who move in with a partner (treatment group II) with singles. Findings - Matching reveals that higher wages are mostly due to positive selection – into marriage as well as into cohabitation. Supplementary analysis of intra‐household time use suggests that specialization, if any, is part of the selection process from single to cohabitation to marriage. Originality/value - This is the first application of non‐parametric matching in a comparative study of the marital and the cohabiting wage premium and thus provides new insights into their respective sources. It is also the first investigation of family‐status‐related wage premiums in Germany.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherin Barg & Miriam Beblo, 2009. "Does marriage pay more than cohabitation?," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 36(6), pages 552-570, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:jespps:v:36:y:2009:i:6:p:552-570
    DOI: 10.1108/01443580911001724
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01443580911001724/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01443580911001724/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/01443580911001724?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maria Marshall & Anna Flaig, 2014. "Marriage, Children, and Self-Employment Earnings: An Analysis of Self-Employed Women in the US," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 313-322, September.
    2. Maciej Jakubowski, 2015. "Latent variables and propensity score matching: a simulation study with application to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment in Poland," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1287-1325, May.
    3. Carole Bonnet & Bruno Jeandidier & Anne Solaz, 2018. "Wage Premium and Wage Penalty in Marriage versus Cohabitation," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 128(5), pages 745-775.
    4. Bruno Jeandidier & Helen Lim, 2015. "Is there justification for alimony payments? A survey of the empirical literature," Working Papers hal-02105214, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:jespps:v:36:y:2009:i:6:p:552-570. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.