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Authors: Chunbei Wang Le Wang

Publish Date: 2017/01/26

Volume: 30, Issue: 3, Pages: 771-804

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Abstract

Despite the historical highs for age at first marriage little is known about the causal relationship between marriage delay and wages and more importantly the mechanisms driving such relationship We attempt to fill the void Building on an identification strategy proposed in Dahl Demography 47689–718 2010 we first establish the causal wage effects of marriage delay We then propose ways to distinguish among competing theories and hypotheses as well as the channels through which marriage delay affects wages Specifically we take advantage of their different implications for causal relationship across gender and subpopulations We reach two conclusions First we find a positive causal impact of marriage delay on wages with a larger effect for women Comparison of IV and OLS estimates suggests that the observed relationship between marriage delay and wages is attributed to both selection in late marriages and true causal effects Second we find strong evidence that the positive causal effects are almost exclusively through increased education for both men and womenThe authors thank Junsen Zhang the editor and three knowledgable referees for their constructive comments The authors are also particularly grateful to Reagan Baughman Daniel Henderson Karen Smith Conway Amitabh Chandra Bruce Elmslie JuChin Huang Delia Furtado Sanders Korenman Ted Joyce Scott Drewianka Per Fredriksson Paul Glewwe Esfandiar Maasoumi Daniel Millimet Solomon Polachek Subal Kumbhakar and Christopher Hanes and seminar participants at the Southern Methodist University University of New Hampshire SUNYBinghamton University of NevadaLas Vegas and SEA Annual Meetings for their invaluable comments and suggestions Mica Kurtz provided excellent research assistance in collecting the data on minimum marriage age laws The usual disclaimers apply

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