The Distribution of Returns to Marriage

Esfandiar Maasoumi, Daniel L. Millimet () and Dipanwita Sarkar ()
Additional contact information
Dipanwita Sarkar: SMU

No 503, Departmental Working Papers from Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The phenomenon that married men earn a higher wage on average than unmarried men, the so-called marriage premium, is rather well established. However, the robustness of the marriage premium across the wage distribution and the underlying cause of the marriage premium are not well known. Focusing on the entire wage distribution and employing recently developed nonparametric tests for stochastic dominance, our findings question the current conception of the marriage premium, calling instead for the introduction of a broader concept incorporating wage dispersion. This broader notion arises from evidence suggesting that the marriage premium is primarily confined to the lower tail of the wage distribution; the premium is negligible at best in the upper tail. Finally, the majority of the premium is explained by selection, but there is a small role for ‘causal’ explanations.Length: 54 pages

Keywords: Marriage premium; stochastic dominance; difference-in-differences; instrumental variable; nonparametric; selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C33 D31 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: Written 2005-10
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