Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled Women

Marianne Bertrand, Patricia Cortés (), Claudia Olivetti and Jessica Pan
Additional contact information
Patricia Cortés: Questrom School of Business, Boston University

No 902, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: In most of the developed world, skilled women marry at a lower rate than unskilled women. We document heterogeneity across countries in how the marriage gap for skilled women has evolved over time. As labor market opportunities for women have improved, the marriage gap has been growing in some countries but shrinking in others. We discuss a theoretical model in which the (negative) social attitudes towards working women might contribute towards the lower marriage rate of skilled women, and might also induce a non-linear relationship between their labor market prospects and their marriage outcomes. The model is suited to understand the dynamics of the marriage gap for skilled women over time within a country with set social attitudes towards working women. The model also delivers predictions about how the marriage gap for skilled women should react to changes in their labor market opportunities across countries with more or less conservative attitudes towards working women. We test the key predictions of this model in a panel of 23 developed countries, as well as in a panel of US states.

Keywords: Marriage; Social Norms; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J12 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-sea and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (62)

Downloads: (external link)
http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp902.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled Women (2018)
Working Paper: Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled Women (2016)
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:boc:bocoec:902

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().