Why Not Settle Down Already? A Quantitative Question

One of the most striking changes in American society over the last 40 years has been the decline and delay in marriage. The fraction of young men and women who have never been married has steadily and significantly increased since before 1970. The economics literature has also noted a rise in labor market volatility over this period. The first contribution of this paper is that we propose a new hypothesis: that these two events are linked. Specifically, if marriage involves consumption commitments, then a rise in volatility in income processes could result in a delay in marriage. The second contribution is to assess this new hypothesis vis-à-vis others in the literature, using an estimated structural model. We find that the decrease in the price of home inputs explains a little over a third of the data. The decrease in the gender wage gap explains a third of the data. Rising income volatility explains a little under a third of the data. All three of these stories are needed in order to provide a satisfactory explanation to the question of why young adults are delaying marriage.