Getting Hitched: The Equilibrium Marriage Market Behaviour of a British Cohort

This paper structurally estimates an equilibrium model of the marriage market using data from the British Cohort Study. The results suggest that both search frictions and selective behaviour determine who marries whom and when, and that education is the most important determinant of an individual’s attractiveness. Simulations of the model, however, only replicate a fraction of the correlations of partners’ characteristics observed in the data, leading us to question some assumptions commonly made in the literature. Simulations also suggest that increased participation in education may have contributed to increased sorting into partnerships.