IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedawp/97-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is the male marriage premium due to selection? The effect of shotgun weddings on the return to marriage

Author

Abstract

In standard cross-sectional wage regressions, married men appear to earn 10 to 20 percent more than comparable never-married men. One proposed explanation for this male marriage premium is that men may be selected into marriage on the basis of characteristics valued by employers as well as by spouses or because they earn high wages. This paper examines the selection hypothesis using a \"natural experiment\" that may make marital status uncorrelated with earnings ability for some men. We compare the estimated marriage premium between white men whose first marriages are followed by a birth within seven months and other married white men in the United States. Married men with a premarital conception generally have a lower return to marriage than other married men. Our results suggest that a substantial portion of the marriage premium is due to selection.

Suggested Citation

  • Donna K. Ginther & Madeline Zavodny, 1998. "Is the male marriage premium due to selection? The effect of shotgun weddings on the return to marriage," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 97-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedawp:97-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.atlantafed.org/-/media/documents/research/publications/wp/1997/wp9705a.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cornwell, Christopher & Rupert, Peter, 1997. "Unobservable Individual Effects, Marriage and the Earnings of Young Men," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(2), pages 285-294, April.
    2. Kermit Daniel, "undated". "A Note on Mark Testa, et al., "Employment and Marriage Among Inner-City Fathers"," University of Chicago - Population Research Center 89-3a, Chicago - Population Research Center.
    3. Daniel, K., 1991. "Does Marriage Make Men More Productive?," University of Chicago - Economics Research Center 92-2, Chicago - Economics Research Center.
    4. Sanders Korenman & David Neumark, 1991. "Does Marriage Really Make Men More Productive?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 26(2), pages 282-307.
    5. Ronald Meng & Jim Sentance, 1984. "Religion and the Determination of Earnings: Further Results," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 17(3), pages 481-488, August.
    6. Blackburn, McKinley & Korenman, Sanders, 1994. "The Declining Marital-Status Earnings Differential," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 7(3), pages 247-270, July.
    7. Meyer, Bruce D, 1995. "Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 151-161, April.
    8. Griffin, Peter & Ganderton, Philip T., 1996. "Evidence on omitted variable bias in earnings equations," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 139-148, April.
    9. Eng Seng Loh, 1996. "Productivity Differences and the Marriage Wage Premium for White Males," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(3), pages 566-589.
    10. Jeffrey S. Gray, 1997. "The Fall in Men's Return to Marriage: Declining Productivity Effects or Changing Selection?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(3), pages 481-504.
    11. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen & Michael L. Katz, 1996. "An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(2), pages 277-317.
    12. Behrman, Jere R & Taubman, Paul, 1986. "Birth Order, Schooling, and Earnings," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 121-145, July.
    13. Daniel, K., 1989. "A Note On Mark Testa , Et Al., "Employment And Marriage Among Inner-City Tethers"," University of Chicago - Economics Research Center 89-3, Chicago - Economics Research Center.
    14. Robert G. Wood, 1995. "Marriage Rates and Marriageable Men: A Test of the Wilson Hypothesis," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(1), pages 163-193.
    15. Angrist, Joshua D, 1995. "Introduction to the JBES Symposium on Program and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 133-136, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nabanita Datta Gupta & Nina Smith & Leslie S. Stratton, 2007. "Is Marriage Poisonous? Are Relationships Taxing? An Analysis of the Male Marital Wage Differential in Denmark," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 74(2), pages 412-433, October.
    2. Rodgers III, William M. & Stratton, Leslie S., 2005. "The Male Marital Wage Differential: Race, Training, and Fixed Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 1745, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Ribar, David C., 2004. "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage? A Review of Quantitative Methodologies," IZA Discussion Papers 998, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Cornaglia, Francesca & Feldman, Naomi E., 2011. "Productivity, wages and marriage: the case of Major League Baseball," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121741, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. David S Loughran & Julie Zissimopoulos, 2008. "Why Wait? The Effect of Marriage and Childbearing on the Wages of Men and Women," Working Papers WR-482-1, RAND Corporation.
    6. Richardson, Katarina, 2000. "The evolution of the marriage premium in the Swedish labor market 1968-1991," Working Paper Series 2000:5, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    7. William M. Rodgers & Leslie S. Stratton, 2010. "Male Marital Wage Differentials: Training, Personal Characteristics, And Fixed Effects," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(3), pages 722-742, July.
    8. Esfandiar Maasoumi & Daniel L. Millimet & Dipanwita Sarkar, 2009. "Who Benefits from Marriage?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(1), pages 1-33, February.
    9. Arif Mamun, 2012. "Cohabitation Premium in Men’s Earnings: Testing the Joint Human Capital Hypothesis," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 53-68, March.
    10. Papps, Kerry L., 2006. "The Effects of Divorce Risk on the Labour Supply of Married Couples," IZA Discussion Papers 2395, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Åström, Johanna, 2009. "The Effects of Assortative Mating on Earnings: Human Capital Spillover or Specialization?," HUI Working Papers 34, HUI Research.
    12. Avner Ahituv & Robert Lerman, 2007. "How do marital status, work effort, and wage rates interact?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 44(3), pages 623-647, August.
    13. Aquilante, Tommaso & Livio, Luca & Potoms, Tom, 2020. "On-the-job training and intra-family dynamics," Bank of England working papers 873, Bank of England.
    14. Alexandra Killewald & Ian Lundberg, 2017. "New Evidence Against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(3), pages 1007-1028, June.
    15. Bruno Jeandidier & Helen Lim, 2015. "Is there justification for alimony payments? A survey of the empirical literature," Working Papers of BETA 2015-30, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    16. Joni Hersch & Leslie S. Stratton, 2000. "Household Specialization and the Male Marriage Wage Premium," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 54(1), pages 78-94, October.
    17. 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.
    18. Daniela Casale & Dorrit Posel, 2010. "The Male Marital Earnings Premium in the Context of Bride Wealth Payments: Evidence from South Africa," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(2), pages 211-230, January.
    19. Tittenbrun, Jacek S., 2011. "Economic Sociology or Economic Imperialism? The Case of Gary C. Becker," MPRA Paper 33708, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Audrey Light & Yoshiaki Omori, 2009. "Economic Incentives and Family Formation," Working Papers 09-08, Ohio State University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Demography; Wages;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:fip:fedawp:97-5. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Rob Sarwark (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbatus.html .

    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.