Marrying Your Mom: Preference Transmission and Women's Labor and Education Choices / Raquel Fernandez, Alessandra Fogli, Claudia Olivetti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fernandez, Raquel.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Fogli, Alessandra.

Olivetti, Claudia.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w9234.

NBER working paper series no. w9234

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Marrying Your Mom

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2002.

Summary:

This paper argues that the evolution of male preferences contributed to the dramatic increase in the proportion of working and educated women in the population over time. Male preferences evolved because some men experienced a different family model one in which their mother was skilled and/or worked. These men, we hypothesize, were more inclined to marry women who themselves were skilled or worked. Our model endogenizes the evolution of preferences in a dynamic setting and examines how it affected women's education and labor choices. We present empirical evidence based on GSS data that favors our transmission mechanism. We show that men whose mothers were more educated or worked are more likely to marry similar women themselves.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2002.