Why Wait? A Century of Education, Marriage Timing and Gender Roles

Murat Iyigun and Jeanne Lafortune

No 9671, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We document that, over the 20th century, age at first marriage followed a U-shaped pattern, while the gender education gap tracked an inverted-U path in the United States. To explain this, we propose a multi-period frictionless matching model where educational and marriage decisions are endogenous. Two key assumptions are made: marriage requires a fixed cost and married couples cannot study simultaneously. This simple model can replicate the aforementioned stylized facts and is consistent with our empirical result that exogenous delays in marriage age caused by minimum age laws decreased the educational difference within a couple while increasing their educational attainment.

Keywords: marriage; education; timing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J12 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published - published as 'Putting the Husband Through: Role of Credit Constraints in Timing of Marriage and Spousal Education' in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2023, 41 (1), 245–289

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Related works:
Working Paper: Why Wait? A Century of Education, Marriage Timing and Gender Roles (2016)
Working Paper: Why Wait? A Century of Education, Marriage Timing and Gender Roles (2016)
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