Do Employers Positively Discriminate Married Workers?

Brendon McConnell and Arnau Valladares-Esteban

No 2305, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: In the US labor market, married men and women earn higher wages than their single counterparts. At the same time, individuals with higher cognitive and non-cognitive skills are more likely to be married. We extend the frameworks of Altonji and Pierret (2001) and Pinkston (2009) to the case of marriage and find no evidence that employers use marriage to statistically discriminate workers. Contrary to what statistical discrimination implies, the returns to being married increase with labor market experience. For women without experience being married is associated with a penalty. However, as experience increases, the relationship between wages and being married becomes positive. These findings are valuable in building a better understanding of the determinants of the marriage wage premium.

Keywords: Marriage Wage Premium; Employer Learning; Statistical Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J16 J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:econwp:2023:05

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