Marriage and the Intergenerational Mobility of Women: Evidence from Marriage Certificates 1850-1920

Katherine Eriksson, Gregory Niemesh, Myera Rashid and Jacqueline Craig

No 34821, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We document that women’s economic mobility improved nearly a century before married women gained broad labor market opportunities. Using Massachusetts marriage registers linked to U.S. censuses (1850–1920), we create new father–child links for women to estimate intergenerational mobility and assortative mating, overcoming a key historical linkage barrier. Estimates from a structural marriage market model suggest assortative mating fell 61% from 1850–1870 to 1900–1920. Counterfactuals imply women’s mobility would have been far lower absent the decline in assortative mating. Had late cohorts faced early cohort sorting, the rank–rank slope between a woman’s father and husband would have been 2.5 times higher.

JEL-codes: J12 J62 N31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
Note: DAE LS
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