We use state repeals of blood test requirements (BTRs) for a marriage license that occurred between 1980 and 2008 to examine the impact of changes in the price of marriage on the marriage decision. Using a within-group estimator that holds constant state and year effects and exploits variation in the repeal dates of BTRs across states, we find…

This study measures the longitudinal effect of disability on earnings, marriage, and divorce. The data come from the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to administrative data on longitudinal earnings. Using event-study methods, the results show that the onset of a work-preventing disability is associated with a precipitous decline…

This paper investigates the effect of relative income on marriage. Accounting flexibly for absolute income, the ratio between a man's income and a local reference group median is a strong predictor of marital status, but only for low-income men. Relative income affects marriage even among those living with a partner. A 10 percent higher reference…

We employ Chinese population census data to consider married, urban women's labor force participation decisions in the context of their families. We find that the presence in the household of a parent, parent-in-law, or person aged 75 or older increases prime-age women's likelihood of participating in market work. The presence of preschool-aged…

Never-married motherhood is associated with worse educational outcomes for children. But this association may reflect other factors that also determine family structure, rather than causal effects. We use incarceration rates for men as instrumental variables in estimating the effect of never-married motherhood on the high school dropout rate of…

This paper investigates the effect of gender differences and household bargaining on charitable giving. I replicate the study of Andreoni, Brown, and Rischall (2003) using a different data set--the recently available Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) supplement on charitable giving--and test the sensitivity of their results to inclusion of…

Using data I collected in Africa, this paper examines a household's decision to adjust its size through child fostering, an institution where biological parents temporarily send children to live with other families. Households experiencing negative idiosyncratic income shocks, child gender imbalances, located further from primary schools, or with…

As women have entered the work force and occupational sex segregation has declined, workers experience increased contact with the opposite sex on the job. The sex mix a worker encounters on the job should affect the cost of search for alternative mates and therefore the probability of divorce. This paper uses 1990 Census data to calculate the sex…

After a long decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We examine how changes in Social Security rules affected these trends. We attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s-80s to the increasing generosity of Social…

This paper demonstrates the extent to which married women's labor supply elasticities have changed over the past quarter century. Estimates from March Current Population Survey data suggest that these elasticities have decreased substantially, by 60 percent for the hours wage elasticity (from 0.36 to 0.14), 70 percent for the hours income…

The analyses use several identification strategies and data sources to control for individual ability and determine the causal effect of marital status and computer usage on wages. The empirical results indicate that marital status and computer usage are not important causal determinants of earnings.

We use a difference-in-difference-in-difference estimator to compare changes in labor force participation, weeks, and hours of work associated with no-fault divorce laws, allowing for differential responses for married women with and without children. Although other research has found that the labor supply of women in general does not respond to…

According to data from the Newly Entitled Beneficiary Survey and the 1979 and 1988 Current Population Survey, much of the gender gap in pensions is caused by gender differences in such labor market characteristics as experience, tenure, and income. Children and marriage have a negative effect on females' pensions, although not for more recent…

A study showing the sharp decline in women physicians' earnings once they are married and faced with family responsibilities is presented.

Using two single-cohort longitudinal surveys, the NLS72 and the NELS88, I investigate the impact of four noncognitive traits--self-esteem, external locus of control, the importance of money/work and the importance of people/family--on wages and on the gender wage gap among these young workers. I find that gender differences in these noncognitive…