The effect of marriage on productivity and wages has been long debated. A difficulty in estimating the effect of marriage on productivity is the lack of data that contain measures of both marital status and exogenous productivity. We fill this gap by using a sample of professional athletes from...

This paper reports evidence on the strong tendency of the college educated to match with partners who graduated in the same field of study – a dimension of assortative matching that has been overlooked thus far. We employ Labor Force Survey data covering most EU countries to measure the extent...

It takes a woman and a man to make a baby. This fact suggests that for a birth to take place, the parents should first agree on wanting a child. Using newly available data on fertility preferences and outcomes, we show that indeed, babies are likely to arrive only if both parents desire one, and...

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (i) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (ii) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (iii) a decline in marriage and a rise in divorce; (iv) a higher...

When markets are incomplete, cultural norms may play an important role in shaping economic behavior. In this paper, we explore whether income shocks increase the probability of child marriages in societies that engage in bride price payments – transfers from the groom to the bride’s parents...

This paper bridges two distinct areas of inquiry: the economic theory of the family and behavioral research on time-inconsistent preferences. In our model, hyperbolic discounting couples engage in household production activities, thereby accumulating family-specific capital over time. At any...

This paper estimates a household saving rate equation for India and Korea using long-term time series data for the 1975-2010 period, focusing in particular on the impact of the pre-marital sex ratio on the household saving rate. To summarize the main findings of the paper, it finds that the...

Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich mit den Anteilen von Eineltern- und Stieffamilien sowie haushaltsübergreifenden Familienstrukturen in verschiedenen europäischen Ländern. Die Frage, wie viele Eineltern- und Stieffamilien es in den verschiedenen Ländern Europas tatsächlich gibt, konnte...

Marriage has declined since 1960, with the drop being bigger for non-college educated individuals versus college educated ones. Divorce has increased, more so for the non-college educated. Additionally, positive assortative mating has risen. Income inequality among households has also widened. A...

This paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross-sectional earnings inequality in Germany over the past three decades, while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices. Using rich micro data, the observed distribution of couples' earnings is compared to a counterfactual...

Existing literature on inequality of opportunity (IOp) has failed to address the question as to how the circumstances and choices of spouses in a couple should be treated. By omitting information relevant to the spouse in IOp estimations, the implicit assumption was full responsibility for the...

Learning about marriage quality has been proposed as a key mechanism for explaining how the probability of divorce evolves with marriage duration, and why people often cohabit before getting married. I develop four theoretical models of divorce, three of which include learning. I use data from...

Existing literature on inequality of opportunity (IOp) has failed to address the question as to how the circumstances and choices of spouses in a couple should be treated. By omitting information relevant to the spouse in IOp estimations, the implicit assumption was full responsibility for the...

This paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross-sectional earnings inequality in Germany over the past three decades, while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices. Using rich micro data, the observed distribution of couples' earnings is compared to a counterfactual...

Custody laws governing living arrangements for children following their parents' divorce have changed dramatically since the 1970s. Traditionally, one parent - usually the mother - was assigned sole custody of the child. Today, many divorced parents continue to share parental rights and...

Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich mit den Anteilen von Eineltern- und Stieffamilien sowie haushaltsübergreifenden Familienstrukturen in verschiedenen europäischen Ländern. Die Frage, wie viele Eineltern- und Stieffamilien es in den verschiedenen Ländern Europas tatsächlich gibt, konnte...