This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Journal of Economic Literature
  4. Forthcoming Articles
  5. The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers

Journal of Economic Literature

ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)

The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers

  • Jeanne Lafortune
  • Laura Salisbury
  • Aloysius Siow
Journal of Economic Literature (Forthcoming)

Abstract

Over the last century, resource allocations within families changed significantly, as did marriage matching patterns. College educated women became more likely to marry (and, to a lesser extent, have children) than less educated women. A large literature documents these patterns and proposes a variety of explanations. We review this literature. Then, we provide a unified empirical framework, which can integrate these mechanisms. We demonstrate the usefulness of that framework by employing it in decennial US censuses and showing that a combination of technological changes that increased the value of children’s education and enabled more educated women to devote more time to childrearing are consistent with multiple behavioral changes within marriage, on the marriage market, and before marriage.

Downloads