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We analyse the different fiscal treatment of married and cohabiting couples across all EU Member States using microsimulation methods. Our article highlights important differences across EU countries' tax–benefit systems, where seven countries show substantial bonuses for married couples and four exhibit marriage penalties. On a micro level, we find that these marriage bonuses/penalties differ substantially across household types and income. From a policy point of view, our results suggest that the abolishment of marriage-related tax–benefit components in countries with marriage bonuses would leave some households financially worse off but would increase governments revenues that could be spent to targeted support of specific groups. From both an equity and efficiency point of view, this abolishment would be desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although insights on bride price and domestic violence have been explored in Ghana, very little is known about payment of bride price and the justification of sexual violence. We investigated the payment of bride price and justification of sexual violence among women (N = 4,222) in Ghana, dwelling on the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. Two binary logistic regression models were fitted. We adjusted for significant sociodemographic variables. The findings revealed that women whose partners had paid their bride price had higher odds [ OR = 1.54; CI = 1.174, 2.00] of justifying sexual violence, compared to those whose partners had not paid. We found that women with primary [AOR = 0.55; CI = 0.44–0.71] and secondary/higher [AOR = 0.47; CI = 0.36–0.60] levels of education had lower odds of accepting sexual violence. Women in the rich wealth quintile [AOR = 0.32; CI = 0.22, 0.46] had lower odds of justifying sexual violence. Our study has illustrated the need for women to appreciate that payment of bride price does not imply that their fundamental human rights have been bought by men, but they rather become partners. This information can form part of premarriage counselling and human rights initiatives by the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection. That is, the content of marriage counselling may be expanded to include issues on IPV, its implications, and legal consequences. Such information can develop personal realization and urge women to report any violent advances to the police and appropriate authorities for the required legal action to be taken. This may deter others to desist from violence perpetration against women. At the community level, chiefs and other leaders of high repute can be made anti-IPV ambassadors. The Ministry of Health and other nongovernmental anti-violence organizations can also collaborate to strengthen education on anti-sexual violence programs by using the mass media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Men's employment is an important predictor of union formation and couples' transitions to marriage, but previous research has not investigated the extent to which the type of men's employment affects the likelihood of marriage. To fill this gap, we use multinomial logistic regression and data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,128) to explore whether men's employment in the underground economy inhibits or promotes the transition to marriage among unmarried parents three years after the birth of their child. The results show that underground work is associated with relationship instability and serves as a barrier to marriage. Thus, in fragile families, the type of work that the father does, independent of the amount of income he earns from such employment, drives couples' decisions to marry. Implications for research and policy that stem from the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the accumulation of personal wealth of husbands and wives and investigates the development of within-couple wealth inequalities over time in marriage. Going beyond previous research that mostly studied the marriage wealth premium using household-level wealth data and that conceptualized marriage as an instantaneous transition with uniform consequences over time, we argue that entry into marriage is a gendered life-course event that dynamically shapes husbands' and wives' wealth accumulation. Using high-quality data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017), we apply fixed-effects regression models to describe wealth accumulation within marriage. We find evidence that wealth premiums are lower during early years of marriage, but increase steadily thereafter. The premium is mostly concentrated in housing wealth. Results from supplementary analyses with limited data, however, suggest that the premium may not be causal for men. Regarding within-couple wealth inequalities, we find a pronounced within-couple wealth gap prior to marriage during pre-marital cohabitation. This gap remains stable over time in marriage. In contrast to findings regarding income, our study indicates that the institution of marriage may not amplify within-couple wealth inequalities further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of financial incentives is a common instrument to advance women's health across low and middle-income countries. Since the 1990s, the conditional cash transfer (CCT) for health has been generally lauded by researchers, policy makers and international financial institutions due to demonstrated improvements in access to health services and a range of health outcomes. Some scholars, however, have cautioned that CCTs should be further scrutinised to assess potential unintended consequences and moral concerns in a variety of contexts. In this article, I re-examine Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a cash incentive programme that aims to promote institutional deliveries in order to reduce high levels of home deliveries and maternal deaths in India. I adopt a critical perspective, focusing on the specific instrument of dowry through the lens of capitalist patriarchy (Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale. London: Zed Books). Global and national health policy experts and policy makers require a greater awareness of the dowry system, since this system may hamper the use of financial incentives by reinforcing the commodification of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bolognese Monte del matrimonio addressed the difficult problem of giving girls with moderate means a chance to marry, thus saving the honor of their families, not merely by charitable benevolence but by active planning. Mixing credit and piety, the Monte was designed in an innovative fashion and differed substantially from other similar institutions. Unlike the many dowry funds which dispensed bequests, it was tailored to give the respectable poor an opportunity to invest at interest their own savings. Parents, relatives, and would-be sponsors were invited to plan ahead by opening accounts for daughters and needy girls in order to provide a dowry at a lower cost. The Monte would manage the investment and pay the dowry when the beneficiary would claim it. Working to shore up the endangered pillar of early modern Bolognese society, the family, the Monte contributed substantially to perpetuating a civic tradition of solidarity by updating and forging a solid network of bonds, which in turn helped to reduce, govern, and channel growing social tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research has consistently shown that married men have substantially higher wages, on average, than otherwise similar unmarried men. One commonly cited hypothesis to explain this pattern is that marriage allows one spouse to specialize in market production and the other to specialize in home production, enabling the former--usually the husband--to acquire more market-specific human capital and, ultimately, earn higher wages. The authors test this hypothesis using panel data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The data reveal that married men spent virtually the same amount of time on home production as did single men, albeit on different types of housework. Estimates from a fixed effects wage equation indicate that the male marriage wage premium is not substantially affected by controls for home production activities. Household specialization, the authors conclude, does not appear to have been responsible for the marriage premium in this sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are used to investigate reasons for the gender earnings gap among the self-employed. Compared to organizational employment, self-employment may allow workers freer adjustment of work effort in response to changing needs for market work income and household production. Consistent with that hypothesis, the analysis shows that self-employed women's earnings declined with marriage, family size, and hours of housework, whereas self-employed men's earnings increased with marriage and family size. Organizationally employed workers' earnings exhibited a similar but less pronounced pattern, suggesting that in the self-employment sector the structure of female/male relative earnings was more sensitive to family size and composition. Self-employed women and men specialized more intensively in housework and market work, respectively. Women apparently tended to choose self-employment to facilitate household production, and men to achieve higher earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage involving a man and a woman is a universal social institution, but its practices vary among cultures. In Nigeria, a marriage is recognized after gifts are given, and a bride price is paid by the groom's family to the bride's family. Understanding the bride price will reduce the challenges women face in their marital homes. Women's autonomy is important for them to address matters affecting their health. We examined married Ikwerre women's perspectives on bride price and its impact on their autonomy using qualitative methods. From December 2014 to March 2015, 34 in-depth interviews and six focus group discussions were conducted with married Ikwerre women. Participants reported that patriarchy and a culture of absolute respect for men, not the bride price, was the reason for women's diminished autonomy. Participants noted that payment of the bride price was critical for validating marriage to give women respectable status in society as wives. Patriarchal rule and the demand for absolute respect for men need to be addressed in the Ikwerre culture. A woman's capability to address her health needs and use health care is largely dependent on her ability to act autonomously. Thus, educational interventions to enable women's decision-making are critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Men's and women's economic resources are important determinants of marriage timing. Prior demographic and sociological literature has often measured resources in narrow terms, considering employment and earnings and not more fine-grained measures of job quality. Yet, scholarship on work and inequality focuses squarely on declining job quality and rising precarity in employment and suggests that this transformation may matter for the life course. Addressing the disconnect between these two important areas of research, this study analyzes data on the 1980-1984 U.S. birth cohort from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to examine the relationships between men's and women's job quality and their entry into marital or cohabiting unions. We advance existing literature by moving beyond basic measures of employment and earnings and investigating how detailed measures of job quality matter for union formation. We find that men and women in less precarious jobs-both jobs with standard work schedules and those that provide fringe benefits-are more likely to marry. Further, differences in job quality explain a significant portion of the educational gradient in entry into first marriage. However, these dimensions of job quality are not predictive of cohabitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage is positively correlated with income, and women with children are much less likely to be in poverty if they are married. Selection into marriage makes it difficult to assess whether these correlations represent a causal effect of marriage. One instrument for marriage proposed in past research is the gender of a woman’s first child. We find that women who have a boy first are about 0.33 percentage points more likely to be married at any point in time. This effect operates through both increasing the probability that unmarried mothers marry the child’s father and reducing the probability of divorce. We also find that women whose first child is a boy experience higher levels of family income and are less likely to receive welfare income, be below the poverty line, and receive food stamps. Estimates using child gender as an instrumental variable for marriage suggest that marriage plays a large causal role in improving the economic well-being of women with children and that these effects are largest among women at the lower end of the income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of mate selection reflect a tendency toward homogamy. Child-bearing patterns vary by race, socioeconomic status, and religion, with conception control a possible reason for the variation. Divorce and separation occur more frequently among black and poor couples, and there is some evidence that nonhomogamous marriages are broken more often than homogamous ones. Despite the increased divorce rate and tendency of young people to delay marriage, there is little empirical support for a radical change in American marriage and family patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a study of a national random sample of mature male managerial, professional, and blue-collar workers, the positive effects of being married and the negative effects of having a working wife on both occupational status and wage attainment were observed most strongly for the professional and managerial subsamples. These results are consistent with both a conformance-to-social expectations and wife-as-career resource arguments, but not as consistent with either human capital/market-signaling or distributive justice arguments. The effects of specific organizational tenure, education, and socioeconomic origins on both forms of attainment tended to be stronger for managers than for professionals, and, in turn, than for the blue-collar respondents. These results are consistent with the different need for control, given the uncertainty of evaluation and performance and importance of the jobs (higher for managers and professionals than for others), and the different mechanisms for achieving control. Professional control is achieved more through extra organizational mechanisms, while managerial control is achieved through background, certification, and tenure, which tend to be associated with compliance to the normative structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the perspectives on nonmarital relationships. Topics include, in the U.S., adults live in a variety of nonmarital relationships, ranging from committed partners who cohabit to people who cohabit with varying levels of commitment; intimate living of partners due to economic motives, such as sharing living expenses or because they may not feel financially stable enough to marry; and legal and law reform responses to nonmarital relationships vary.

This paper determines an empirical indicator for the cost of marrying a spouse with a different level of impatience or rate of time preference, and/or a different degree of aversion to intertemporal variability in consumption. Empirical data from different published sources are used to calibrate the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature from the Middle East and North Africa holds that many youth get stuck in a phase of “wait adulthood” while they struggle to afford the housing, furniture, appliances, celebrations, and jewelry considered necessary to establish a new marital union. In semi-structured interviews with 66 urban Egyptian men and women who were engaged to be married, I found that many marriages were postponed when young couples were unable to make the matrimonial transactions required by custom. However, I argue that normative barriers are no less important than material barriers to marriage in this context. Matrimonial transactions could not be reduced or forgone because they communicated important meanings related to class and gender. The celebrations and home visits that accompanied a new union involved conspicuous consumption, and actors strove to reproduce the material behaviors that predominated in their social class in order to secure a favorable position in the hierarchy of new couples. Matrimonial transactions were sharply gendered, and adherence to matrimonial norms and the ritualized situations that came with them signaled actors’ dedication to ideals of masculinity and femininity and the unequal roles they would occupy within marriage, at the same time that matrimonial exchanges built in safeguards for women within marriage. Young couples were keenly aware that failure to live up to the material standards of their social circles would be met with loss of face and negative judgements about their personal qualities, making such outlays appear to be compulsory rather than optional. At the same time, conforming to matrimonial customs resulted in greater symbolic capital, or social prestige. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage and family strengthening programs have historically had small magnitude effects on changing relationship outcomes. The present study explores the possibility that although these statistical effects are small, they can be shown to represent meaningful financial impacts. Secondary data from 2092 control and 2042 intervention couples who were married with children and participating in the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) project were analyzed. Intervention participants had the opportunity to receive standardized curricula (e.g., PREP) and marital counseling. Similar to meta-analytic findings, conventional analysis of these data found only a modest impact on proximal relationship outcomes (e.g., satisfaction). Offering counseling in conjunction with curricula, although costlier and only demonstrating marginally significant improvements in averting divorce, appears to offer a substantial financial return on investment. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Married women’s material resources are widely regarded as determinants of gendered power relations between husbands and wives. Although a growing literature describes the material transactions that accompany marriage, few empirical studies investigate their association with women’s postmarital outcomes. Using nationally representative survey data from Egypt (n = 6,987), I test the assumption that matrimonial outlays are associated with women’s power (as measured by respondents’ reported influence in making household decisions). I find that absolute matrimonial outlays mostly bear a weak positive association with Egyptian wives’ decision-making power. My results further show that proportional spending on marriage bears a much stronger association with women’s decision-making power. A higher percentage of marriage costs covered by the bride’s side carries a net advantage for women, suggesting that parental investments in daughters’ marriages signal familial support for the bride, thus enhancing her power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

West Bengal (WB) ranks high among the 15 major states of India, where there is still a disturbing persistence of underage marriage among girls, leading to early motherhood as a consequence. The article explores the reasons for this in the context of social and economic conditions in the state. The article argues that more than poverty and illiteracy, the unavailability of new employment opportunities for women and girls in the rural and urban areas of the state explains why parents do not have the incentive to invest in more schooling or the higher education of their daughters. The article is mainly based on secondary data with occasional references to some primary evidence from a recent survey done by the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examined positive emotions as mediating mechanisms in the association between economic strain and spouses' supportive behaviour. Data were collected from 295 married couples living in Romania. Results from the Actor–Partner Mediator Model indicated that economic strain had a negative indirect effect on spouses' supportive dyadic coping due to its negative association with partners' positive emotions (joy, contentment, and pride). For both partners, positive emotions decreased when they experienced economic strain, which in turn reduced supportive dyadic coping in couples. These findings have theoretical implications in explaining the association of economic strain with partners' positive emotions and behaviours and also clinical implications for practitioners working with couples experiencing economic strain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has examined various state-level measures that predict state economic growth and other economic and social indicators. This research has largely ignored the potential role of family structure in contributing to state-level outcomes, despite the extensive literature on links between family structure and economic outcomes at the individual level. We estimated a state-level panel model and found that both the proportion of adults and the proportion of parents who are married are strongly related to important state-level economic outcomes, including economic growth, median household income, median personal income, and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do single women avoid career-enhancing actions because these actions signal undesirable traits, like ambition, to the marriage market? While married and unmarried female MBA students perform similarly when their performance is unobserved by classmates (on exams and problem sets), unmarried women have lower participation grades. In a field experiment, single female students reported lower desired salaries and willingness to travel and work long hours on a real-stakes placement questionnaire when they expected their classmates to see their preferences. Other groups' responses were unaffected by peer observability. A second experiment indicates the effects are driven by observability by single male peers. (JEL C93, D82, J12, J16, J31) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates gender-specific changes in the total financial return to education among persons of prime working ages (35-44 years) using U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000, and the 2009-2011 American Community Survey. We define the total financial return to education as the family standard of living as measured by family income adjusted for family size. Our results indicate that women experienced significant progress in educational attainment and labor market outcomes over this time period. Ironically, married women's progress in education and personal earnings has led to greater improvement in the family standard of living for married men than for women themselves. Gender-specific changes in assortative mating are mostly responsible for this paradoxical trend. Because the number of highly educated women exceeds the number of highly educated men in the marriage market, the likelihood of educational marrying up has substantially increased for men over time while women's likelihood has decreased. Sensitivity analyses show that the greater improvement in the family standard of living for men than for women is not limited to prime working-age persons but is also evident in the general population. Consequently, women's return to education through marriage declined while men's financial gain through marriage increased considerably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some previous studies of the relationship between women's labor force participation and household income inequality indicate that the promotion of the former has an equalizing effect on the latter; other studies insist that the promotion of women's labor force participation has a widening effect on household income inequality by way of the tendency toward assortative marriage. Hence, the relationship between women's labor force participation and household income inequality is unclear in the literature. This study aims to clarify the mechanism through which the interaction between household income and marriage produces social inequality by using mathematical and simulation-based approaches. The presented findings suggest that the promotion of women's labor force participation has a temporary widening effect on household income inequality, but an attenuating effect in the long run. They also state that assortative marriage itself has no widening effect on household income inequality, but rather an accelerating effect on widening inequality. Finally, by applying the model of that mechanism to Japan, I examine changes in household income inequality in that country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of inter-generational transfers on the marital surplus, measured as the difference between the utility level in marriage and in divorce. To that end, we consider a three-generation family playing a two-stage sequential game. In this framework, we find conditions under which an increase in inter-generational transfers leads to a decrease in the marital surplus, which may reduce the incentives of parents to donate income to their married children. Supplemental analysis, developed to study whether inter-generational transfers are crowded out by public transfers, suggests that altruistically-motivated inter-generational transfers are not always displaced by public transfers, especially when parents are highly altruistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We develop a novel framework to analyze the structural implications of the marriage market for household consumption. We define a revealed preference characterization of efficient household consumption when the marriage is stable. We characterize stable marriage with intrahousehold (consumption) transfers but without assuming transferable utility. Our revealed preference characterization generates testable conditions even with a single observation per household and heterogeneous individual preferences across households. The characterization also allows for identifying the intrahousehold decision structure (including the sharing rule) under the same minimalistic assumptions. An application to Dutch household data illustrates the usefulness of our theoretical results. (JEL D60, D63, H21, H23, I38) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores why dowry inflation persists in Bangladesh, despite the country being widely heralded as a development success, especially with regard to gender. The article asks three questions. Does rural Bangladesh show changing patterns of marriage similar to those reported elsewhere in South Asia and more broadly? What might explain the persistent spread and inflation of dowry payments? How might changes in marriage and the inflation of dowry be related to the broader political economy of development in Bangladesh? Analysis of primary data from rural Bangladesh affirms shifts in norms of marriage arrangement and conjugal relationships, but also emphasises considerable continuity. The political economy of development in Bangladesh is briefly described. Dowry is argued to function not as compensation for perceived weakness in women’s economic contribution, but to bolster men’s. In mobilising “additional” resources, dowries help sustain the economic system and indicate ongoing commitment to cultural idioms of masculine provision and protection, against a background of widespread corruption and political and gender violence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What explains the growing gap in marriage rates between socioeconomic groups? We present a robust stylized fact not previously documented: marriage rates are higher for individuals with more assets. We argue this may be driven by marriage and cohabitation becoming increasingly similar in a number of ways except for the way assets become marital property to be divided upon divorce in marriage while they remain individual property in the case of cohabitation. We propose that ownership of assets may provide 'insurance' to the partner making individually costly, but jointly optimal, investments in children, thus raising the value of marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined effects of local economic conditions on individuals' attitudes toward midpregnancy marriages using an experimental vignette method. Adults ( N = 460) were each shown two vignettes about a hypothetical couple expecting a baby; within each vignette pair, vignettes randomly varied as to whether the couple lived in a community that had recently experienced job losses or had stable employment. Respondents indicated if the couple should and will get married before the baby's birth. Results showed that worse local economic conditions led people to believe that marriage would be less common. Among more socioeconomically disadvantaged respondents, if the hypothetical couple lived in a community with job loss, fewer respondents also thought that the couple should marry. In contrast, among more socioeconomically advantaged respondents, slightly more respondents thought that the couple should marry. When economic conditions worsen, low-socioeconomic-status individuals may believe that financial prerequisites for marriage become harder to meet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND In sociological literature, expectations about marriages' duration are generally considered to be one of the main determinants in the pooling of economic resources between spouses. According to Catholic precepts, religious marriages are indissoluble, and Italy is characterized by a Catholic religious monopoly, with an anomalously high level of religious attendance for a developed country. OBJECTIVE It may therefore be surmised that religious marriages should be characterized by a high propensity for opting for a pooled patrimonial system. Is this hypothesis confirmed by data? METHODS We studied comprehensive data on all the marriages solemnized in Italy for the period 2007-2009. We then use multivariate logistic regressions to assess which factors are associated with a greater propensity for opting for the pooled patrimonial system. RESULTS We find that religious marriages are not characterized by a higher probability of wealth pooling with respect to civil marriages. CONTRIBUTION To our knowledge, this is the first work to analyze the relationship between the choice of a religious marriage and the choice of the marital patrimonial system. We conclude that religious marriages in Italy do not reflect genuine adherence to the Catholic principle of the indissolubility of marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs an economic model to study the emergence of marriage based on a new infra-marginal general equilibrium analysis. By depicting the commonness and complementarity of marriage, we explain how a single person shifts from being single to being married based on the division of labor. Meanwhile, reduced learning costs will make an individual more willing to abandon the single status, and the number of families in the marriage market will increase. The model reveals the necessary conditions for the existence of marriage and marital stability and explains the dynamic changes in the relative population and the prices of parties in the marriage market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage formation is deeply embedded in societal context. This study documents trends towards lower marriage rates and delayed marriage in Europe and the US. Using time series analyses, it shows the relevance of economic and gender context in understanding marriage formation. The study extends previous work by including more countries, a longer time period, and by examining changes in predictors of marriage patterns over time. Analyses show that the association between economic context and marriage rates weakens over time, but the role of gender equality and policy context remain stable. Differences in age at first marriage across policy clusters are diminishing. Although greater gender equality is consistently linked to later marriage entry, the link between economic context and age at first marriage is changing. Changes in predictors of cross-national marriage patterns over time strongly suggest the institution of marriage itself is changing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many parts of the world, higher education has increased female chances of paid work and reduced the economic benefits of marriage. In Iran, however, female labour force participation has remained in low rates despite considerable improvements in female education. In the absence of direct economic benefits of education for women, this paper uses data from the 2009 Time Use Survey, representing urban areas of Iran, to explore another pathway of the impact of education on transition to marriage. It is postulated that female education can lead to later marriage by changing women’s role priorities, at least in two ways. While enrolment in education is time-consuming and incompatible with requirements of marital life, higher education can increase the chances and desire for engagement in alternatives to the roles related to marriage. The findings provide partial support for both explanations. These findings not only deepen our understanding about differentials in the time use and the potential pathway of the impact of female education on marriage, but also provide important information for policy makers who are concerned with marital and fertility behaviours of the large cohort of young educated women in Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of economic growth hypothesize that the transition from pre-industrial stagnation to sustained growth is associated with a post-Malthusian phase in which technological progress raises income and spurs population growth while offsetting diminishing returns to labor. Evidence suggests that England was characterized by post-Malthusian dynamics preceding the Industrial Revolution. However, given England's special position as the forerunner of the Industrial Revolution, it is unclear if a transitory post-Malthusian period is a general phenomenon. Using data from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, this research provides evidence for the existence of a post-Malthusian phase in the transition from stagnation to growth in Scandinavia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to quantify the impact of changing family structures on labor supply and savings in Western societies. Our dynamic general equilibrium model features both genders, and it takes into account changes in marital status as a stochastic process. The numerical results indicate that changes in household formation can partly explain the reallocation of male and female labor supply observed during the last decades in Germany. We also find a negative impact on capital accumulation, and we show that a combination of higher marital risk and a narrowing gender wage gap can explain the changes in hours ratios between single and married men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the longitudinal associations among financial strain, trajectories of marital processes, and increases in marital instability concerns among a sample of 280 African American newlywed couples followed over the first 3 years of marriage. Results from dyadic structural equation modeling revealed that financial strain experienced during the early years of marriage was associated with increased marital instability concerns for both husbands and wives. Latent growth curves of marital processes revealed mean declines in appraisals of spousal warmth and increases in appraisals of spousal hostility, with variability between individuals in rates of decline in warmth; further, wives' appraisals of spousal warmth covaried with levels of financial strain, such that high levels of financial strain were associated with steeper declines in spousal warmth appraisals. For both husbands and wives, rates of change in spousal warmth appraisals had a greater influence on increases in marital instability concerns than either starting levels of spousal warmth appraisals or financial strain. Findings highlight the long-term associations between external stress and trajectories of marital appraisals as well as their relative effects on marital distress. (PsycINFO Database Record [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are increasing concerns about whether Americans are saving enough for retirement. Recent research has called for improved understanding of the relationship between family structure and economic preparation for retirement at earlier stages of the life course. Using multiple years of the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances, we examined how number of children and marital status were associated with women's household retirement savings at young and mid-adulthood. Several household-level indicators of retirement preparation were considered: desire to save for retirement, retirement account ownership, eligibility to participate in a defined-contribution plan, participation in defined-contribution plans, and retirement account wealth. Results from regression analyses revealed variation in women's household financial preparation for retirement at young and mid-adulthood by family context. Additional children were negatively associated with several measures of retirement preparation among single-female households but not for couple households. Overall, we found that low economic preparation for retirement is an additional economic disadvantage facing single mothers at young and mid-adulthood, with potentially long-term implications for their financial security. The results shed light on linkages between family structure and women's economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97, this article investigates how work characteristics (earnings and autonomy) shape young adults’ transition to first marriage separately for men and women. The results suggest that earnings are positively associated with marriage and that this association is as strong for women as men in their mid to late 20s. Additionally, occupational autonomy—having the control over one’s own work structure—facilitates entry into first marriage for women in their mid to late 20s but, for men, occupational autonomy is not associated with marriage at these ages. These results suggest that even as women’s earnings are increasingly important for marriage, other aspects of work are also important for stable family formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates criticisms by Sarah G. Carmichael, Alexandra de Pleijt, Jan Luiten van Zanden, and Tine De Moor of our view of the European Marriage Pattern (EMP), and explains why their claims are incorrect. We elaborate our arguments concerning the institutional sources of economic growth, explore the relationship between women's position and the EMP, analyze the two-way links between demographic and economic behavior, and explicate aspects of our empirical analysis that these scholars find puzzling. The causes of European economic growth, we reiterate, are not to be found in the EMP but rather must be sought in the wider framework of nonfamilial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We review different interpretations of the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and explore how they relate to the discussion of the link between the EMP and economic growth. Recently Dennison and Ogilvie have argued that the EMP did not contribute to growth in Early Modern Europe. We argue that the link between the EMP and economic growth is incorrectly conceptualized. Age of marriage is not a good scale for the degree to which countries were characterized by EMP. Rather, the economic effects of the EMP should be seen in the broader context of how marriage responds to changing economic circumstance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A sizable literature examines whether and why marriage affects men’s and women’s wages. This study advances current research in two ways. First, whereas most prior studies treat the effect of marriage as time-invariant, I examine how the wage effect of marriage unfolds over the life course. Second, whereas prior work often focuses on the population-average effect of marriage or is limited to some particular gender or racial group, I examine the intersection of gender and race in the effect of marriage. Analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I find that the marriage wage premium grows steadily and at a similar pace among white and black men. The marriage wage premium declines toward negative among white women, yet it grows steadily among black women. Furthermore, measured work experience explains a substantial amount of the wage premium among black men, yet it has little explanatory power among white men, pointing to the importance of unobserved factors in white men’s marriage premium. Changes in work experience negatively affect married white women’s wages, yet they positively affect married black women’s wages, pointing to the important differences between black and white families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses global capitalism and romantic love. Topics discussed include economic relationships, marriages and sociological definitions of love. Other topics such as definition of love in Christianity, social inequality and social stratification are also discussed. Feminism and Marxism are mentioned.

Employment has become increasingly precarious in developed countries, meaning that, for many young adults, jobs provide neither benefits nor security, more work is part time, and employers are increasingly hiring workers from temporary help agencies and contract companies rather than as employees of their own company. These changes in employment relations have profound effects on gender roles and on family transitions of young adults, especially young men and in particular in countries such as Japan, where there are rigid family norms and the male-breadwinner tradition still prevails. The authors examined the effects of the experience of non-regular work on the timing of marriage and whether this differs by sex. Using recent life history data from Japan, they found that men working in non-regular jobs are especially likely to postpone marriage. The implications of the growth of precarious work for changes in work and family institutions in Japan are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vibrant literature has emerged that explores the economic implications of the sex ratio (the ratio of men to women in the population), including changes in fertility rates, educational outcomes, labor supply, and household purchases. Previous empirical efforts, however, have paid less attention to the underlying channel via which changes in the sex ratio affect economic decisions. This study combines evidence from a field experiment and a survey to document that the sex ratio importantly influences female bargaining power: as the sex ratio increases, female bargaining power increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years the issue of child marriage has received growing political and programmatic attention. In spite of some progress in a number of countries, global rates have not declined over the past decade. Knowledge gaps remain in understanding trends, drivers and approaches to ending child marriage, especially to understand what is needed to achieve results on a large scale. This commentary summarizes the outcomes of an Expert Group Meeting organized by World Health Organization to discuss research priorities on Ending Child Marriage and Supporting Married Girls. It presents research gaps and recommends priorities for research in five key areas; (i) prevalence and trends of child marriage; (ii) causes of child marriage (iii) consequences of child marriage; (iv) efforts to prevent child marriage; (v) efforts to support married girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes changes in marriage behavior in the U.S. from 1950 through 2010. It discusses factors in the decline of the social land legal importance of marriage such as acceptance of premarital cohabitation, policies on divorce and child support for children born out of wedlock and rising rate of premarital childbearing. It also examines trends in marriage behavior across socio-economic groups, race and gender.

The article focuses on marriage in the U.S. It offers an overview of changes in family structure between 1970 and 2010 such as married women and living with their children, single women with children, and single mothers who have never married. It discusses effects of changes in family structure on children's development such as nonmarital births and single-parent families. It looks into government policies to reverse the fall in two-parent families and assist single-parent families.

The article reviews fifteen social experiments and their impact on marriage and cohabitation in the U.S. It examines policy interventions in areas including early childhood education, human capital development, workforce training and income support which were found to have improved economic standing and increased marriage among target men and women such as Career Academies, New Hope and Opportunity NYC.

The article presents racial and ethnic differences in marriage patterns in the U.S. It examines divergence of marriage patterns among white, Hispanic and black women on marriage formation and marital instability considering factors such as increases in economic contribution of women to the household, fall in relevance of marriage about family arrangements, and labor market land structural disadvantages, particularly for black men.