How do marital status, wage rates, and work commitment interact?

Arbeitspapier

How marriage interacts with men's earnings is an important public policy issue, given debates over programs to directly encourage healthy marriages. This paper generates new findings about the earnings-marriage relationship by estimating the linkages between marriage, work commitment, and wage rates. Unlike other studies of the marital wage premium for men, we examine how marital status and marital transitions affect hours worked as well as wage rates, take account of the feedback effect on wage rates and earnings associated with marriage effects on hours worked, estimate marriage effects on black and low skill men, control for several dimensions of selection, and follow men from age 17-40. We find that marriage increases men's earnings by about 20 percent and also find a rise in wage rates and hours worked increases marriage. These findings suggest that both marriage-enhancing and earnings-enhancing policies can set off a virtuous circle, in which marriage and earnings reinforce each other over time. Unmarried men who appear unable to support a family because of low current earnings are likely to become more adequate breadwinners once they marry. Thus, if proposed programs are able to increase the utility from and appreciation of marriage, they are likely to generate earnings gains for men as an important side effect.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 1688

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Panel Data Models; Spatio-temporal Models ; Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse ; Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Labor Standards: Public Policy
• Thema: labor supply ; wage determinants ; marriage ; marital dissolution ; Ehe ; Arbeitsethik ; Lohn ; Männliche Arbeitskräfte ; USA

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Ahituv, Avner ; Lerman, Robert I.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2005

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/33607
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ