Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    MARRIAGE MARKETS, DIFFERENTIAL FECUNDITY AND SEARCH

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    umi-umd-1730.pdf (907.9Kb)
    No. of downloads: 5325

    Date
    2004-07-27
    Author
    Giolito, Eugenio Pedro
    Advisor
    Ausubel, Lawrence M
    Sanders, Seth G
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    It is commonly observed that over time and across societies, women tend to marry older men. The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that wages increase with age and hence older men are more attractive in the marriage market. The model developed in Chapter 2 of this dissertation shows that a marriage market equilibrium where women marry earlier in life than men can be achieved without making any assumptions about the wage process or gender roles. The only driving force in this model is the asymmetry in fecundity horizons between men and women. When the model is calibrated with Census Data, the average age at first marriage and the pattern of the sex ratio of single men to single women over different age groups mimics the patterns observed in developed countries during the last decade. Chapter 3 extends the model in order to analyze assortative mating. In this case people belong to one of two groups and prefer to marry someone within the group. In this chapter it is shown that, given constant preferences, the limited horizon for searching for a mate affects the likelihood of intermarriage through ages, and the dynamic is different for men and women. Chapter 4 is an empirical study and uses 1970 and 1980 US Census data to study how the local sex ratios of single men to single women affect several aspects of the marriage market. Unlike earlier literature, this work also investigates other margins over which individuals can substitute in the marriage market -- specifically the choice of spouse's characteristics. These new results suggest that a shortage of single men leads women (and also men) to marry earlier. This suggests a more elastic response for women to a tight marriage market than the one for men. This is consistent with a marriage model where the search horizon for women is shorter than the one for men, as the one developed in the previous chapters. The results also suggest that an adverse change in the sex ratio can lead both men and women to marry outside of their own racial or educational group.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/1754
    Collections
    • Economics Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility