Marriage Meets the Joneses: Relative Income, Identity, and Marital Status

Tara Watson and Sara McLanahan
Additional contact information
Tara Watson: Williams College
Sara McLanahan: Princeton University

No 2010-06, Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of relative income on marriage. Accounting flexibly for absolute income, the ratio between a man's income and a local reference group median is a strong predictor of marital status, but only for low-income men. Relative income affects marriage even among those living with a partner. A ten percent higher reference group income is associated with a two percent reduction in marriage. We propose an identity model to explain the results.

Keywords: marriage; relative income; inequality; identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2010-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-lab, nep-pbe and nep-ure
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Published in Journal of Human Resources 46: 568-586

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