A marriage-market perspective on risk-taking and career choices

Abstract

We document that women are less likely than men to be in “risky” occupations, i.e., those that exhibit large within-occupation wage dispersion. We first demonstrate that a new theoretical channel—the competitive structure of the marriage market—may incentivize both men and women to choose riskier careers with lower wage returns. We then show that a unifying factor—women’s relative inability to reap the benefits of a risky career due to their shorter reproductive span and consequent career-family trade-off—can help rationalize a set of gender differences in labor-market and marriage-market outcomes. Using data from the United States, we provide empirical evidence that supports the model predictions.

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