Fertility Differences between Married and Cohabiting Couples: A Switching Regression Analysis

Junfu Zhang and Xue Song ()
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Xue Song: affiliation not available

No 3245, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Little is known about why cohabiting couples have fewer children than married couples. We explore the factors that explain the difference in fertility between these two groups using a switching regression analysis, which enables us to quantify the contribution of different factors through a decomposition of the difference. We find that married couples have more children than cohabiting couples primarily because marriage provides stronger incentives for specialization in household production. Unobserved self-selection plays a less important role.

Keywords: fertility; marriage; cohabitation; switching regression; self-selection; household specialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2007-12
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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