For love or for money? A study of the marriage wage premium in Colombia

Laura Gómez Duarte () and Sami Gabriel Coavas Blanquicett

Revista Ecos de Economía, 2016, vol. 20, issue 42, 70-89

Abstract: Being married may raise worker productivity and increase the probability of remaining in a job and, as consequence, obtaining a wage premium. Yet, this effect may be different for males and females. In developing countries, such as Colombia, the premium may be larger than in developed countries due to the differing social norms and labor market structures. Using cross-sectional data from Colombian Household Surveys, this paper examines the marriage wage premium and its evolution in Colombia both at the aggregate level and by gender. We find a marriage wage premium for both male and female populations; this wage premium is explained by the greater human capital endowment in married people and to employer favoritism due to the “social norms” which consider being married an appropriate behavior and reward it.

Keywords: Married; non-married; Wage Gap, Marriage; Wage Premium; Colombia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 G14 G15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://publicaciones.eafit.edu.co/index.php/ecos-economia/article/view/3567

Related works:
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:col:000442:014943

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revista Ecos de Economía from Universidad EAFIT Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Valor Público EAFIT - Centro de estudios e incidencia ().