Date:
Location:
"New Evidence Against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium"
Speaker:
Alexandra Killewald, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.
Could marriage be associated with increases in men’s wages? Recent research claims that men’s long-term wage benefits from marriage are as high as 20%. They begin prior to marriage, as they anticipate marriage or experience wage benefits of unmarried partnership. In this seminar, Killewald challenges those findings and argues instead that marriage has no causal effect on men’s wages in either the short- or long-term. Rather, research on the marriage wage premium has overlooked literature in other subfields suggesting that marriage occurs when wages are already and unusually, rapidly rising. A vast literature documents that economic circumstances influence men’s decisions when to marry, suggesting that wages may affect marriage, rather than the reverse. Using data from the NLSY79, Killewald concludes that these observed wage patterns are most consistent with men marrying at a time that their wages are already rising and divorcing when their wages are already falling, with no additional causal effect of marriage on wages.
Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead Initiative on Gender Inequality and the Harvard Kennedy School, Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP).
Contact:
Sarah Banse
sarahbanse@wcfia.harvard.edu
