Description
This book deals with the economics of marriage from a number of different perspectives. While this book contains numerous facts and empirical findings and touches on policy issues, its main contribution to the existing literature lies in the theoretical perspective it offers. The core of this book is a general equilibrium theory of labor and marriage presented in Part Two, which provides the conceptual framework for the rest of the chapters. Parts Three and Four deal with two major implications of the theory: sex ratio effects and compensating differentials in marriage. Part Five presents further applications of the theory to three topics related to marriage: the choice between marriage and cohabitation the connection between divorce and labor supply and polygamy. These chapters test a number of hypotheses regarding the effect of aggregate characteristics such as sex ratios, and individual characteristics such as education and income, on these aspects of marriage. Chapters in Part Six all deal with such investments in spouses’ human capital. The juxtaposition of all these chapters demonstrates the usefulness of the conceptual framework. It demonstrates how a few core concepts, linked via economic analysis, help explain a multitude of findings based on statistical analyses of data from a wide variety of cultures. It is hoped that readers of this book will improve their understanding of how marriage works to help us design better economic and social policies as well as help people live better and happier lives, making the book of interest to not only economists but sociologists and anthropologists as well.
