Social Insurance and the Marriage Market

Petra Persson

Journal of Political Economy, 2020, vol. 128, issue 1, 252 - 300

Abstract: Social insurance is often linked to marriage. Existing evidence suggests small marital responses to financial incentives and stems from settings where benefits are realized in the near future. I analyze how linking survivors insurance to marriage affects the marriage market. Exploiting Sweden’s elimination of survivors insurance, I demonstrate that severing this link (1) affected entry into marriage up to 50 years before expected payout, (2) raised the divorce rate by 10%, and (3) raised the assortativeness of matching. This suggests that marital behavior is a key component of couples’ strategies to plan for financial security in old age.

Date: 2020
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Working Paper: Social insurance and the marriage market (2015)
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