Household Search and the Marital Wage Premium

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Pilossoph, Laura; Wee, Shu Lin
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York; Carnegie Mellon University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20180092
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 55-109
• 关键词: job search; marriage; men; earnings

摘要

We develop a model where selection into marriage and household search generate a marital wage premium. Beyond selection, married individuals earn higher wages for two reasons. First, income pooling within a joint household raises risk-averse individuals' reservation wages. Second, married individuals climb the job ladder faster, as they internalize that higher wages increase their partner's selectivity over offers. Specialization according to comparative advantage in search generates a premium that increases in spousal education, as in the data. Quantitatively, household search explains 10-33 -percent and 20-58 percent of the premium for males and females, respectively, and accounts for its increase with spousal education.