The role of evolving marital preferences in growing income inequality

In this paper, we describe mating patterns in the USA from 1964 to 2017 and measure the impact of changes in marital preferences on between-household income inequality. We rely on the recent literature on the econometrics of matching models to estimate complementarity parameters of the household pro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of population economics 2020-01, Vol.33 (1), p.307-347
Main Authors: Ciscato, Edoardo, Weber, Simon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Assortative mating
Complementarity
Demographics
Demography
Econometrics
Economic models
Economics
Economics and Finance
Education
Households
Income
Income inequality
Labor Economics
Marriage
Mating
Model matching
Original Paper
Parameter estimation
Population Economics
PREFERENCES
Social Policy
Socioeconomics
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In this paper, we describe mating patterns in the USA from 1964 to 2017 and measure the impact of changes in marital preferences on between-household income inequality. We rely on the recent literature on the econometrics of matching models to estimate complementarity parameters of the household production function. Our structural approach allows us to measure sorting along multiple dimensions and to effectively disentangle changes in marital preferences and in demographics, addressing concerns that affect results from existing literature. We answer the following questions: Has assortativeness increased over time? Along which dimensions? To what extent can the shifts in marital preferences explain inequality trends? We find that, after controlling for other observables, assortative mating in education has become stronger. Moreover, if mating patterns had not changed since 1971, the 2017 Gini coefficient between married households would be 6% lower. We conclude that about 25% of the increase in between-household inequality is due to changes in marital preferences. Increased assortativeness in education positively contributes to the rise in inequality, but only modestly.
ISSN:0933-1433
1432-1475
DOI:10.1007/s00148-019-00739-4