Killewald Alexandra, Lundberg Ian
Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
Department of Sociology and Office of Population Research, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA.
Demography. 2017 Jun;54(3):1007-1028. doi: 10.1007/s13524-017-0566-2.
Recent research has shown that men's wages rise more rapidly than expected prior to marriage, but interpretations diverge on whether this indicates selection or a causal effect of anticipating marriage. We seek to adjudicate this debate by bringing together literatures on (1) the male marriage wage premium; (2) selection into marriage based on men's economic circumstances; and (3) the transition to adulthood, during which both union formation and unusually rapid improvements in work outcomes often occur. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we evaluate these perspectives. We show that wage declines predate rather than follow divorce, indicating no evidence that staying married benefits men's wages. We find that older grooms experience no unusual wage patterns at marriage, suggesting that the observed marriage premium may simply reflect co-occurrence with the transition to adulthood for younger grooms. We show that men entering shotgun marriages experience similar premarital wage gains as other grooms, casting doubt on the claim that anticipation of marriage drives wage increases. We conclude that the observed wage patterns are most consistent with men marrying when their wages are already rising more rapidly than expected and divorcing when their wages are already falling, with no additional causal effect of marriage on wages.
近期研究表明，男性在结婚前工资上涨速度比预期更快，但对于这是表明存在选择因素还是预期结婚的因果效应，各方解释存在分歧。我们试图通过整合以下三方面的文献来评判这场争论：（1）男性婚姻工资溢价；（2）基于男性经济状况的婚姻选择；（3）向成年期的过渡，在此期间往往会出现组建家庭和工作成果异常快速改善的情况。利用1979年全国青年纵向调查的数据，我们对这些观点进行了评估。我们发现工资下降先于离婚而非在离婚之后出现，这表明没有证据表明维持婚姻对男性工资有利。我们发现年龄较大的新郎在结婚时没有出现异常的工资模式，这表明观察到的婚姻溢价可能仅仅反映了年轻新郎向成年期过渡时的同时发生情况。我们表明，奉子成婚的男性婚前工资增长与其他新郎类似，这让人怀疑结婚预期推动工资上涨这一说法。我们的结论是，观察到的工资模式最符合这样的情况：男性在工资已经比预期上涨更快时结婚，在工资已经下降时离婚，婚姻对工资没有额外的因果效应。
