Male Wage Inequality and Characteristics of "Early Mover" Marriages

Hani Mansour () and Terra McKinnish
Additional contact information
Hani Mansour: University of Colorado Denver

No 15138, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Previous work shows that higher male wage inequality decreases the share of ever married women in their 20s, consistent with the theoretical prediction that greater male wage dispersion increases the return to marital search. Consequently, male wage inequality should be associated with higher husband quality among those "early-mover" women who choose to forgo these higher returns to search. We confirm using U.S. decennial Census and American Community Survey (ACS) data from 1980-2018 that married women ages 22-30 in marriage markets with greater male wage inequality are more likely to marry up in education and in husband's occupation. We additionally consider whether male wage inequality increases wage uncertainty, leading women to prefer older husbands who can send stronger signals of lifetime earnings. We confirm that higher male wage inequality is also associated with a larger marital age gap.

Keywords: marriage; marital search; marital sorting; inequality; male wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics , 2022, 36, 115–138

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15138.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Male wage inequality and characteristics of “early mover” marriages (2023)
Working Paper: Male Wage Inequality and Characteristics of "Early Mover" Marriages (2022)
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:iza:izadps:dp15138

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().