Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:43:06.910Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

MARRIAGE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2017

Alessio Moro ,
Solmaz Moslehi  and
Satoshi Tanaka
Alessio Moro*
Affiliation:
University of Cagliari
Solmaz Moslehi
Affiliation:
Monash University
Satoshi Tanaka
Affiliation:
University of Queensland and CAMA
*
Address correspondence to: Alessio Moro, Department of Economics and Business, University of Cagliari, Via Sant’Ignazio 17, 09123, Cagliari, Italy; e-mail: amoro@unica.it.
Get access

Abstract:

There is an extensive literature discussing how individuals’ marriage behavior changes as a country develops. However, no existing data set allows an explicit investigation of the relationship between marriage and economic development. In this paper, we construct new cross-country panel data on marital statistics for 16 OECD countries from 1900 to 2000, in order to analyze such a relationship. We use this data set, together with cross-country data on real GDP per capita and the value added share of agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors, to document two novel stylized facts. First, the fraction of a country’s population that is married displays a hump-shaped relationship with the level of real GDP per capita. Second, the fraction of the married correlates positively with the share of manufacturing in GDP. We conclude that the stage of economic development of a country is a key factor that affects individuals’ family formation decisions.

Keywords

marriagefraction of the marriedeconomic developmentstructural transformationsectoral sharescross-country analysisE23E25J11J12
Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 83 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 379 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We thank Michele Boldrin, Nezih Guner, Diego Restuccia, José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, and seminar participants at the University of Queensland, University of Technology Sydney, University of Sassari, University of Melbourne, Monash University, the Econometric Society North American Meeting (Minneapolis), Public Economic Theory (Seattle), the Southern Workshop in Macroeconomics (Auckland), the Summer School in Economic Growth (Capri), the V Workshop on Institutions, Individual Behavior and Economic Outcomes (Alghero), and the Third Workshop on Structural Change and Macroeconomic Dynamics (PSE) for the useful comments. Stojanka Andric provided excellent research assistance. The data and Stata codes used in this paper are available online at https://github.com/econtanaka/JODE_Moro_Moslehi_Tanaka. The usual disclaimers apply.

References

REFERENCES

Abramitzky, R., Delavande, A., and Vasconcelos, L. (2011) Marrying up: The role of sex ratio in assortative matching. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3 (3), 124–157.Google Scholar
Angrist, J. (2002) How do sex ratios affect marriage and labor markets? Evidence from America’s second generation. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (3), 997–1038.Google Scholar
Autor, D., Dorn, D., and Hanson, G. (2017) When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage-Market Value of Men. National Bureau of Economic Research NBER Working Paper No. 23173.Google Scholar
Becker, G. S. (1973) A theory of marriage: Part I. Journal of Political Economy 81 (4), 813–846.Google Scholar
Becker, G. S. (1981) A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bertrand, M., Cortés, P., Olivetti, C., and Pan, J. (2016) Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled Women. National Bureau of Economic Research NBER Working Paper No. 22015.Google Scholar
Buera, F. J. and Kaboski, J. (2012a) The rise of the service economy. American Economic Review 102 (6), 2540–2569.Google Scholar
Buera, F. J. and Kaboski, J. P. (2012b) Scale and the origins of structural change. Journal of Economic Theory 147 (2), 684–712.Google Scholar
Cameron, A. C. and Trivedi, P. K. (2005) Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chade, H. and Ventura, G. (2002) Taxes and marriage: A two-sided search analysis. International Economic Review 43 (3), 955–985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chesnais, J.-C. (1992) The Demographic Transition: Stages, Patterns, and Economic Implications. Gloucestershire, UK: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Chiappori, P.-A., Salanié, B., and Weiss, Y. (2017) Partner choice and the marital college premium: Analyzing marital patterns over several decades. American Economic Review 107 (8), 2109–2167.Google Scholar
Fernández, R., Guner, N., and Knowles, J. (2005) Love and Money: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Household Sorting and Inequality. Quarterly Journal of Economics 120 (1), 273– 344.Google Scholar
Galor, O. (2005) From stagnation to growth: Unified growth theory. Handbook of Economic Growth 1, 171–293.Google Scholar
Galor, O. and Weil, D. N. (1996) The gender gap, fertility, and growth. American Economic Review 86 (3), 374–87.Google Scholar
Galor, O. and Weil, D. N. (2000) Population, technology, and growth: From malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond. American Economic Review 90 (4), 806–806.Google Scholar
Goldin, C. (1995) The U-shaped female labor force function in economic development and economic history. In Investment in Women’s Human Capital and Economic Development. Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Greenwood, J. and Guner, N. (2008) Marriage and divorce since World War II: Analyzing the role of technological progress on the formation of households. NBER Macroeconomics Annual 23 (1), 231–276.Google Scholar
Greenwood, J., Guner, N., and Knowles, J. A. (2003) More on marriage, fertility, and the distribution of income. International Economic Review 44 (3), 827–862.Google Scholar
Greenwood, J., Guner, N., Kocharkov, G., and Santos, C. (2016) Technology and the changing family: A unified model of marriage, divorce, educational attainment, and married female labor-force participation. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 8 (1), 1–41.Google Scholar
Herrendorf, B., Rogerson, R., and Valentinyi, Á. (2013) Two perspectives on preferences and structural transformation. American Economic Review 103 (7), 2752–2789.Google Scholar
Herrendorf, B., Rogerson, R., and Valentinyi, Á. (2014) Growth and structural transformation. Handbook of Economic Growth 2, 855–941.Google Scholar
Iyigun, M. and Lafortune, J. (2016) Why wait? A Century of Education, Marriage Timing and Gender Roles. IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, IZA Discussion Paper No. 9671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimura, M. and Yasui, D. (2010) The Galor–Weil gender-gap model revisited: From home to market. Journal of Economic Growth 15 (4), 323–351.Google Scholar
Kongsamut, P., Rebelo, S., and Xie, D. (2001) Beyond balanced growth. Review of Economic Studies 68 (4), 869–882.Google Scholar
Lam, D. (1988) Marriage markets and assortative mating with household public goods: Theoretical results and empirical implications. Journal of Human Resources 23 (4), 462–487.Google Scholar
Lundström, H. (1999) Befolkningsutvecklingen under 250 År: Historisk Statistik för Sverige. Stockholm, Sweden: Statistiska Centralbyrån.Google Scholar
Maddison, A. (2005) Measuring and interpreting world economic performance 1500–2001. Review of Income and Wealth 51 (1), 1–35.Google Scholar
Minnesota Population Center (2014) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International: Version 6.3 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Mitchell, B. (2007) International Historical Statistics 1750–2005. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Moro, A., Moslehi, S., and Tanaka, S. (2017) Does home production drive Structural transformation?. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 9 (3), 116–46.Google Scholar
Ngai, L. R. and Petrongolo, B. (2017) Gender gaps and the rise of the service economy. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 9 (4), 1–44.Google Scholar
Ngai, L. R. and Pissarides, C. A. (2007) Structural change in a multisector model of growth. American Economic Review 97 (1), 429–443.Google Scholar
Olivetti, C. (2014) The female labor force and long-run development: The American experience in comparative perspective. In Boustan, C. F. L. Platt and Margo, R. (eds.), Human Capital in History: The American Record. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Olivetti, C. and Petrongolo, B. (2014) Gender gaps across countries and skills: Demand, supply and the industry structure. Review of Economic Dynamics 17 (4), 842–859.Google Scholar
Regalia, F., Ríos-Rull, J.-V., and Short, J. (2011) What Accounts for the Increase in the Number of Single Households? University of Pennsylvania, Mimeo.Google Scholar
Rendall, M. (2013) Structural change in developing countries: Has it decreased gender inequality?. World Development 45, 1–16.Google Scholar
Rendall, M. (2017a) Brain versus Brawn: The Realization of Women’s Comparative Advantage. University of Zurich, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, Working Paper No. 491.Google Scholar
Rendall, M. (2017b) Female Market Work, Tax Regimes, and the Rise of the Service Sector. Review of Economic Dynamics, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Ritzmann-Blickenstorfer, H. (1996) Historische Statistik der Schweiz. Eisengasse, Zürich, Switzerland: Chronos-Verlag.Google Scholar
Ruggles, S., Genadek, K., Goeken, R., Grover, J., and Sobek, M. (2015) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 6.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. http://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V6.0.Google Scholar
Schoen, R., Urton, W., Woodrow, K., and Bai, J. (1985) Marriage and divorce in twentieth century American cohorts. Demography 22 (1), 101–114.Google Scholar
Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J. (2007) Marriage and divorce: Changes and their driving forces. Journal of Economic Perspectives 21 (2), 27–52.Google Scholar