Betting the House: How Assets Influence Marriage Selection, Marital Stability, and Child Investments

Marriage used to be practically universal, but now persists as an institution for only some groups, while others choose non-marital fertility. This paper posits that if one role of marriage is to insure one partner\u27s investment in children, then home-ownership can be seen as providing the necessary collateral for this contract. As easier divorce and paternity enforcement outside of marriage have reduced the relative strength of the marital contract, the division of assets, particularly the family home, post-separation has remained unique to marriage. We provide a model where husbands can ante up the marital home to elicit more optimal child investments, whose costs are born mostly by the mother, by reducing the chance of divorce while providing consumption insurance to their partner. This, in turn, increases the value of marriage for those able to access this collateralized version of the contract. The model predicts that individuals able to buy a home at the time of marriage will invest more in children and have greater labor specialization, while policy changes that eroded marriage\u27s relative commitment value would have heterogenous effects by asset-holding, both of which appear to hold in US data

Are Intra-Household Allocations Policy Neutral? Theory and Empirical Evidence

We develop a collective household model with spousal matching in which there exists marital gains to assortative matching and marriage quality for each couple is revealed ex post. Changes in alimony laws are shown to affect existing couples and couples-to-be differently. For existing couples, legislative changes that favor (wo)men benefit them especially if the marriage match quality is low, while, for couples not yet formed, they generate offsetting intra-household transfers and lower intra-marital allocations for the spouses who are the intended beneficiary. We then estimate the effect of granting alimony rights to cohabiting couples in Canada using a triple-difference framework since each province extended these rights in different years and requiring different cohabitation length. We find that obtaining the right to petition for alimony led women to lower their labor force participation. These results, however, do not hold – and, in some cases, are reversed – for newly formed cohabiting couples.intra-household allocations, matching, cohabitation, alimony laws

Essays on matching, marriage and human capital accumulation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2008.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis explores the link between human capital accumulation and the functioning of marriage markets. The first chapter studies the effect of marriage market conditions on pre-marital investment. After showing how a change in the sex ratio can alter incentives for investments, I test this prediction using exogenous variation in the marriage market sex ratio, brought about by immigration, exploiting the preference of second generation Americans for endogamous matches. I find that a worsening of marriage market conditions spurs higher pre-marital investments, measured by years of education, literacy and occupational choice. Overall, the results suggest that there are substantial returns to education in the marriage market, and that both men and women take these returns into account when making education decisions. The second chapter studies the role played by caste and other attributes in arranged marriages among middle class Indians. Using interview data from a sample of parents who placed matrimonial ads in a popular Bengali newspaper, we estimate preferences for each attribute. We then compute a set of stable matches and find it quite similar to the actual matches observed in the data, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. There is a very strong preference for in-caste marriage but, because this preference is horizontal rather than vertical and because the groups are fairly balanced, in equilibrium, the cost of insisting on marrying within one's caste is small which allows castes to remain a persistent feature of this marriage market. Finally, the third chapter estimates the effect of marriage delay on fertility by exploiting state laws that restricted age of marriage in the first half of the 20th century.(cont.) These state laws strongly predict the age at first marriage for both males and females. Moreover, they also influence the age of one's spouse. Using these laws to instrument the age at first marriage for both spouses, I find that delaying marriage of a female by one year reduces fertility by 0.35. The effect of male's timing on fertility outcomes is smaller. Ignoring the effect that these laws have on one spouse's age would lead to an overestimate of the effect.by Jeanne Lafortune.Ph.D

What Happens the Morning After? The Costs and Benefits of Expanding Access to Emergency Contraception

Emergency contraception (EC) can prevent pregnancy after sex, but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. Over the past 15 years, access to EC has been expanded at both the state and federal level. This paper studies the impact of those policies. We find that expanded access to EC has had no statistically significant effect on birth or abortion rates. Expansions of access, however, have changed the venue in which the drug is obtained, shifting its provision from hospital emergency departments to pharmacies. We find evidence that this shift may have led to a decrease in reports of sexual assaul

Marriage in modern India: does caste still matter for mate selection?

LSE’s Maitreesh Ghatak, Abhijit Banerjee (MIT), Esther Duflo (MIT), and Jeanne Lafortune (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) analyse why a strong preference for intra-caste marriages endures despite changing economic incentives, which should have made characteristics such as education or income more attractive. This article is the second instalment of a three-part series on changing marriage norms among middle-class Indians

Marry for What: Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India

This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We then compute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that we observe in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actual matches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage. However, because both sides of the market share this preference and because the groups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, in equilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste to remain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market.