Marriage Patterns in the United States / David E. Bloom, Neil G. Bennett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bloom, David E.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bennett, Neil G.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w1701.

NBER working paper series no. w1701

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1985.

Summary:

This paper analyzes cohort marriage patterns in the United States in order to determine whether declining rates of first marriage are due to changes in the timing of marriage, the incidence of marriage, or both. Parametric models, which are well-suited to the analysis of censored or truncated data, are fit separately to information on age at first marriage derived from three data sets which were collected independently and at different points in time. Extended versions of the models are also estimated in which the parameters of the model distributions are allowed to depend on social and, economic variables.The results provide evidence that the incidence of first marriage is declining and that there is only a slight tendency for women to delay marriage. In addition, education is the most important correlate of decisions about the timing of first marriage whereas race is the most important correlate of decisions about its incidence.

Notes:

Print version record

September 1985.