What Women See in Men and Vice Versa: Estimates Based on Sex Ratios and Marriage Patterns

Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, Shannon Seitz and Satoshi Tanaka
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Jose-Victor Rios-Rull: University of Pennsylvania, University College London, CAERP, CEPR, NBER
Shannon Seitz: Analysis Group
Satoshi Tanaka: University of Queensland

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: Much of what looks like changing marriage preferences over the twentieth century is actually demographics. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in sex ratios across U.S. birth cohorts (1870, 1930, 1950), we jointly identify preferences, match quality dynamics, and the costs of marriage and divorce. Demographics alone explain two-thirds of cross-cohort differences. Women’s premium for older husbands collapsed across cohorts; men’s preferences barely changed. Love that survives its early years becomes permanent, but the odds of surviving fell from 97% to 44%. Divorce costs fell six-fold and depend on life stage. A horse race across behavioral channels shows that the match quality process—not mate-age preferences—is the primary dimension of generational change. Declining divorce costs and fragile match quality are substitutes: either alone fits the data, but together they reveal two independent dimensions of social change. The model validates out of sample on the 1910 and 1970 cohorts.

Keywords: Demographic Transition; Sex Ratio; Marriage and Divorce; Two-Sided Search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J10 J11 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2026
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