This paper investigates the effect of relative income on marriage. Accounting flexibly for absolute income, the ratio between a man's income and a local reference group median is a strong predictor of marital status, but only for low-income men. Relative income affects marriage even among those living with a partner. A ten percent higher reference group income is associated with a two percent r...

This paper evaluates the status exchange hypothesis for Australia and the United States, two Anglophone nations with long immigration traditions whose admission regimes place different emphases on skills. Using log-linear methods, we demonstrate that foreign-born spouses trade educational credentials via marriage with natives in both Australian and U.S. marriage markets and, moreover, that nati...

In many traditional societies, women's age at marriage acts simultaneously as a gateway to new family roles and the likelihood of producing offspring. However, inadequate attention has previously been given to the broader health and social implications of variability in women's marriage age for public health. Biomedical scientists have primarily been concerned with whether the onset of reproduc...

Given the recent increase in the prevalence of cohabiting unions in Botswana, this paper speculates on the role this type of union plays in contemporary Botswana family system. The analysis is based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative data from the 2001 Cohabitation Survey and the 1996 Botswana Family Health Survey respectively. The overall results reveal that cohabitation differ...

OBJECTIVES This study focuses on East Asian countries and investigates the difference in the marriage premium on the health-marriage protection effect (MPE) between younger and older generations and the intra-couple education concordance effect (ECE) on the health of married individuals. This study used inter-country comparative data from China, Japan, and Korea. METHODS This study focused on...

Relative wealth concerns can affect risk-taking behavior, as the payoff to a marginal dollar of wealth depends on the wealth of others. In particular, status concerns that arise endogenously due to competition in the marriage market can lead to greater risktaking if the more desirable mates prefer wealthier suitors. We evaluate empirically the importance of this effect in a high-stakes setting ...

In standard cross-sectional wage regressions, married men appear to earn 10 to 20 percent more than comparable never-married men. One proposed explanation for this male marriage premium is that men may be selected into marriage on the basis of characteristics valued by employers as well as by spouses or because they earn high wages. This paper examines the selection hypothesis using a “natural ...

There is a well-established link between marital status and mental health, but previous research has produced mixed results about the reasons for this relationship. Some studies propose that marriage provides protection from stressors and increases personal coping abilities (the causation perspective), whereas other studies argue that marriage markets “weed out” individuals predisposed to illne...