Journal of Economic Literature
ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)
The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 62,
no. 4, December 2024
(pp. 1538–88)
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 child-rearing are consistent with multiple behavioral changes within marriage, on the marriage market, and before marriage.Citation
Lafortune, Jeanne, Laura Salisbury, and Aloysius Siow. 2024. "The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers." Journal of Economic Literature, 62 (4): 1538–88. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20231648Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I20 Education and Research Institutions: General
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- N31 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
- N32 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: U.S.; Canada: 1913-