“WHY NOT SETTLE DOWN ALREADY?” A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE DELAY IN MARRIAGE
Cezar Santos and
David Weiss
International Economic Review, 2016, vol. 57, issue 2, 425-452
Abstract:
A striking change in American society in the last 40 years has been the decline and delay in marriage. The fraction of young adults who have never been married increased significantly between 1970 and 2000. Idiosyncratic labor income volatility also rose. We establish a quantitatively important link between these facts. If marriage involves consumption commitments, then a rise in income volatility delays marriage. We quantitatively assess this hypothesis vis‐à‐vis others in the literature. Increased volatility accounts for about 20% of the observed delay in marriage and is strong relative to other mechanisms.
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/iere.12163
Related works:
Working Paper: “Why Not Settle Down Already?” A Quantitative Analysis of the Delay in Marriage (2014) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:iecrev:v:57:y:2016:i:2:p:425-452
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0020-6598
Access Statistics for this article
International Economic Review is currently edited by Michael O'Riordan and Dirk Krueger
More articles in International Economic Review from Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association 160 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6297. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().