Common Law Marriage and Couple Formation

Shoshana Grossbard and Victoria Vernon ()

No 8480, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The Current Population Survey is used to investigate effects of Common Law Marriage (CLM) on whether young US-born adults live in couples in the U.S. CLM effects are identified through cross-state and time variation, as some states abolished CLM over the period examined. Analysis based on Gary Becker's marriage economics helps explain why CLM affects couple formation and does so differently depending on education, sex ratios and parent status. CLM reduces in-couple residence, and more so for childless whites and where there are fewer men per woman. Effects are larger for college-educated men and women without college.

Keywords: Common-Law Marriage; couple; couple formation; marriage; cohabitation; Gary Becker (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J10 J12 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2014, 3:16

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp8480.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Common law marriage and couple formation (2014)
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:dp8480

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 ().