Schooling, Search, and Spouse Selection: Testing Economic Theories of Marriage and Household Behavior

Abstract

The implications of the economic theories of marriage and of household fertility behavior are tested in a framework in which educational investment, marital search, and marital matches are responsive to marriage-market conditions and the personal traits of individual agents, some of which are unobserved by the econometrician. Implications are also derived and tested for the effects of longevity, attractiveness, preferences, and labor- and marriage-market conditions on schooling, marriage age, and spouse choice. The empirical results indicate that inattention to heterogeneity and martial selection leads to a false rejection of the economic theory of marriage but to a false acceptance of the value-of-time fertility hypothesis.

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