Marriage Premium and Class

Unmarried cohabitation has become a more frequently observed phenomenon over the last three decades, and not only in the United States. The objective of this work is to examine income differentials between married women and those who remain single or cohabitate. The empirical literature shows that, while the marriage premium is verified in different studies for men, the result for women is not conclusive. The main innovation of my study is the existence of controls for selection. In this study, we have two sources of selectivity: into the labor force and into a marital status category. The switching regressions and the Oaxaca decomposition results demonstrate the existence of a significant penalty for marriage. Correcting for both types of selection, the difference in wages varies between 49% and 53%, when married women are compared with cohabiting ones, and favors non-married women. This result points to the existence of a marriage penalty.

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Selection and the Marriage Premium for Infant Health

Demography ◽

10.1007/s13524-013-0211-7 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 50 (4) ◽

pp. 1315-1339 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Kasey S. Buckles ◽

Joseph Price

Keyword(s):

Infant Health ◽

Marriage Premium

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Do straight men “come out” at work too? The heterosexual male marriage premium and discrimination against gay men

Sexual Orientation Discrimination ◽

10.4324/9780203086650-12 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 94-110

Keyword(s):

Gay Men ◽

Heterosexual Male ◽

Marriage Premium

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Racial-Ethnic and Gender Differences in Returns to Cohabitation and Marriage: Evidence from the Current Population Survey

10.31235/osf.io/z6qc9 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Philip N. Cohen

Keyword(s):

Black Women ◽

Current Population Survey ◽

Population Survey ◽

White Women ◽

White Men ◽

Never Married ◽

Marriage Premium ◽

Current Population ◽

And Gender ◽

Racial Ethnic

Using data on cohabitation from the 1995-1997 March Current Population Survey, the first three years inwhich the survey included "unmarried partner" as a relationship category, I measure the relationship betweenearnings and cohabitation as well as other marital statuses across racial-ethnic groups for men and women.Results show that among 25-54 year-old workers, black women have the largest cohabitation "premium" --the earnings advantage over never-married workers -- more than three-times the premium for white women.Hispanic women have no cohabitation premium. White men have the largest marriage premium, and eachother group except white women also has a significant marriage premium. There is a significant cohabitationbenefit for white men, black men, and Hispanic men. Substantial differences in observed effects across groupssuggest the need for models that are more complicated than previously used. Research into marital statuseffects on earnings is misleading when restricted to white men.

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