Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-Marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market

Jeanne Lafortune

No 422, Documentos de Trabajo from Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Abstract: This paper explores how a rise in a gender's scarcity may impact educational investments using exogenous variation in the marriage market of second generation Americans in early 20th century. Theoretically, one may expect this to occur through two potential channels: a change in matching possibilities or in post-match bargaining. Empirically, I find that worse marriage market conditions spurs higher pre-marital investments: the effect for males is significant (0.2 years of education for one standard deviation in the sex ratio) while for females, it is only observed in highly endogamous groups. When faced with an exogenously larger number of males per females, males’ marriages appear to be less stable and more likely to involve natives and more educated spouses while women are less likely to work and, for those in high endogamous groups, marry more immigrants.

Keywords: Pre-marital investments; Sex ratios; Marriage market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J24 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dem and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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https://www.economia.uc.cl/docs/doctra/dt-422.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market (2013)
Working Paper: Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-Marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ioe:doctra:422

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