Children can be considered as a marriage-specific investment that increases the value of the marriage, making a divorce …, for the United States, to investigate the relation between fertility and marriage instability. In our model of marriage … children conceived during first marriage. Our results indicate that the presence of children significantly reduces the …

Since 1950 the sources of the gains from marriage have changed radically. As the educational attainment of women … specialization in work weakened. The primary source of the gains to marriage shifted from the production of household services and … commodities to investment in children. For some, these changes meant that marriage was no longer worth the costs of limited …

involved in the legislative process), we show that an expansion in the welfare state increases the fertility, marriage, and … divorce rates with a quantitatively stronger effect on the marriage rate. We conclude that the welfare state supports family … formation. Nevertheless, we also find that the welfare state decouples marriage and fertility, and therefore, alters the …

Low female schooling attainment, early marriage and low age at first birth are major policy concerns in developing … countries. This paper jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age and age of first birth among … related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling resulted in a delay of marriage by 1.5 years. Marrying one …

of these custody law reforms on the incidence of marriage and divorce. Our identification strategy exploits the different … data suggest that the introduction of joint custody led to a long-run increase in marriage rates. There is no convincing … dampened the persistent downturn in marriage. Our empirical evidence is fully consistent with the supposition that these …

This paper examines whether parental marriage confers educational advantages to children relative to cohabitation. We … exploit a dramatic marriage boom in Sweden in late 1989 created by a reform of the Widow’s Pension System that raised the … attractiveness of marriage compared to cohabitation to identify the effect of marriage. Sweden’s rich administrative data sources …

more children than cohabiting couples primarily because marriage provides stronger incentives for specialization in …

had little effect on the probabilities of entering into marriage and parenthood at a young age. In contrast, both the … marriage and motherhood. …

We use elementary game-theoretical concepts to compare domestic equilibria with and without marriage. In particular, we … examine the effects of marriage legislation, matrimonial property regime, and divorce court sentencing practice, on the … decision to marry, and on the choice of game conditional on marriage. We find that, in the absence of social stigma or legal …