Marital status in a developing economy: gender, ethnicity and family structure

Reed Neil Olsen

Applied Economics, 2009, vol. 41, issue 2, 151-169

Abstract: This article employs population survey data for Trinidad and Tobago to investigate the likelihood of being married, both legal and common law in the present or the past, as compared to being never married, in a developing economy. The article finds support for the sex-specialized theory of marital formation, with men valued more and women valued less for their economic contributions to the family. Socioeconomic status and ethnicity play an important role in marital formation with sex specialization less likely to occur among Africans than the more advantaged ethnic groups. One of the consistent findings is that family structure matters crucially in predicting both legal and common law marriages. For example, living in a large, multigenerational household tends to impact the likelihood of marriage, as compared to remaining single, in opposite ways for men and women, with men in large households more likely to be married but women less likely to be married.

Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840600994203 (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:applec:v:41:y:2009:i:2:p:151-169

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840600994203

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

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