Assortative mating and ethnicity in the low wage population: an examination of spouses' earnings

Michael Zimmer

Applied Economics Letters, 1996, vol. 3, issue 5, 311-315

Abstract: Social scientists have long maintained an interest in the socioeconomic underpinnings of marital formation. Considerable research has focused on patterns of spouse selection which tend to pair individuals of like characteristics. One area which invites more research involves assortative mating of labour market characteristics such as hours worked and hourly wages. This study examines correlations among husband-wife pairs in the low-income population. Based on a special data extract from the Seattle-Denver income maintenance experiments, regression models of wages and hours worked are estimated separately for husbands and wives. Residuals from these models are used to estimate husband-wife correlations in unmeasured labour market traits. Results indicate evidence to support the hypothesis that spouse-selection patterns are not consistent across race groups and point to the need for further research.

Date: 1996
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article& ... 40C6AD35DC6213A474B5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:apeclt:v:3:y:1996:i:5:p:311-315

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/135048596356429

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().