The effect of same-sex marriage laws on different-sex marriage: Evidence from The Netherlands

Mircea Trandafir

Cahiers de recherche from Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke

Abstract: It has long been argued that the legalization of same-sex marriage would have a negative impact on marriage. In this paper, I examine what happened to different-sex marriage in the Netherlands after the enactment of two laws: in 1998, a law that provided all couples with an institution almost identical to marriage--registered partnership--, and in 2001, a law that legalized same-sex marriage for the first time in the world. I first construct a synthetic control for the Netherlands OECD data for the period 1988-2005 and find that neither law had significant effects on either the overall or different-sex marriage rate. I next construct a unique individual-level dataset covering the period 1995-2005 by combining the Dutch Labor Force Survey and official municipal records. The estimates from a discrete-time hazard model with unobserved heterogeneity for the first-marriage decision confirm the findings in the aggregate analysis. The effects of the two laws are heterogeneous, with presumably more liberal individuals as defined by their residence or ethnicity marrying less after both laws and potentially more conservative individuals marrying more after each law.

Keywords: Age at first marriage; same-sex marriage; discrete-time hazard model; synthetic control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2009-11, Revised 2012-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://gredi.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/wpapers/GREDI-0923.pdf First version, November 2009 (application/pdf)
http://gredi.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/wpapers/GREDI-0923R.pdf Revised version, July 2011 (application/pdf)
http://gredi.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/wpapers/GREDI-0923R2.pdf Revised version, October 2011 (application/pdf)
http://gredi.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/wpapers/GREDI-0923R3.pdf Revised version, February 2012 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effect of Same-Sex Marriage Laws on Different-Sex Marriage: Evidence From the Netherlands (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shr:wpaper:09-23

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