Price, Joseph --- "Is it Just about Love? Factors that Influence Marriage" [2011] ELECD 593; in Cohen, R. Lloyd; Wright, D. Joshua (eds), "Research Handbook on the Economics of Family Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Economics of Family Law

Editor(s): Cohen, R. Lloyd; Wright, D. Joshua

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848444379

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Is it Just about Love? Factors that Influence Marriage

Author(s): Price, Joseph

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

1 Is it just about love? Factors that influence
marriage
Joseph Price


1. INTRODUCTION

Marriage is associated with a number of positive outcomes. Married people live longer,
engage in fewer risky behaviors, earn more money, and have better child outcomes (Waite
1995). Most theories of marriage suggest that marriage should have a positive impact on
the health of both the individuals who are married and their children (Duncan, Wilkerson,
and England 2006). First, marriage facilitates easier monitoring of a partner's behavior.
They note that "people behave better when someone with power to reward or sanction is
watching" and marriage provides a situation in which there is someone watching much of
the time. Second, the institution of marriage might come with expectations, obligations,
and social sanctions against certain behaviors. Third, marriage facilitates a wide net of
social bonds involving the extended families and friends of both individuals in the mar-
riage. Fourth, marriage provides legal access to the partner's resources and a system in
which each individual in the marriage can take advantage of economies of scale.1
The primary empirical challenge in estimating the causal effect of marital status on
various outcomes of interest is that there may be selection into marriage (with individu-
als who would have had better outcomes anyway choosing to marry). This unobserved
differential selection may be driving the differences observed in past empirical work
rather than being a causal impact of marriage. Ribar (2004) describes various empiri-
cal approaches that might be used ...