An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity

Hanzhe Zhang ()

No 7872, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: I build an equilibrium investment-and-marriage model to explain stylized facts about education, income, and marriage for Americans born in the twentieth century that had not been explained in a unified way. The most novel finding is a theoretical explanation for why women attend college at a higher rate and earn a lower average income than men. Differential fecundity and an equilibrium marriage market form the basis of my explanation. The model also accounts for gender-specific relationships between age at marriage and income, as well as the evolving relationship between age at marriage and spousal income for women. I provide evidence to support my theory and calibrate the model to conduct counterfactual analyses.

Keywords: college gender gap; earnings gender gap; marriage age; nonassortative matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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