Akerlof, George A; Yellen, Janet L; Katz, Michael L - In: The Quarterly Journal of Economics 111 (1996) 2, pp. 277-317
This paper relates the erosion of the custom of shotgun marriage to the legalization of abortion and the increased availability of contraception to unmarried women in the United States. The decline in shotgun marriage accounts for a significant fraction of the increase in out-of-wedlock first...