Cupid and Psyche: Cognition and the Choice of the Partner

Annalisa Marini

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The paper provides the first empirical evidence on the importance of cognition - numeric ability - in the choice of the partner. Using the British Household Panel Study Understanding Society, I estimate a structural model of marriage sorting on a representative sample of British couples. Results show that partners with similar numeric ability are attracted to each other. Cognition and physical characteristics are the most important attributes in marriage sorting. Personality traits and risk propensity are also relevant to various extents. Heterogeneous preferences across gender are found and results are robust to an alternative specification. Implications of mutual attractiveness in cognition for marriage dynamics are discussed.

Keywords: Cognition; Marriage Sorting; Personality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 J12 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017, Revised 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/99712/1/MPRA_paper_99712.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:pra:mprapa:99712

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().