Skip to main content
Article
Income Prospects and Age at Marriage
Journal of Population Economics (1996)
  • Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Bob Schoeni, University of Michigan
Abstract

In an earlier paper Courtship as a Waiting Game, Mark Bagnoli and I proposed a theory that explained why it is the case that in almost every society and at almost all recorded times, the average age at marriage of men exceeds that of women. An additional prediction of this model was that men who married later in life would turn out to have higher incomes when they reach maturity than those who marry young. The current paper reviews this theory and tests it with U.S. data. Consistent with our theory, we find that there is a strong positive relationship for men between age at marriage and earnings in later life and that no such relationship exists for women.

Keywords
  • marriage age,
  • screening,
  • age at marriage,
  • income
Disciplines
Publication Date
August 11, 1996
Citation Information
Ted Bergstrom and Bob Schoeni. "Income Prospects and Age at Marriage" Journal of Population Economics Vol. 9 Iss. 2 (1996)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ted_bergstrom/56/