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FERTILITY SHOCKS AND EQUILIBRIUM MARRIAGE‐RATE DYNAMICS
Author(s) -
Knowles John,
Vandenbroucke Guillaume
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.658
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1468-2354
pISSN - 0020-6598
DOI - 10.1111/iere.12395
Subject(s) - endogeneity , fertility , matching (statistics) , economics , demographic economics , sex ratio , marital status , affect (linguistics) , demography , econometrics , psychology , statistics , sociology , mathematics , population , communication
Female marriage probabilities were 50% higher in France in the years after World War 1, despite a large drop in the sex ratio. We develop a model of marital matching in which composition effects in the singles pool affect postdisruption matching rates. When calibrated to French data from World War 1, this mechanism explains 2/3 of the postwar rise in female marriage probabilities as the result of better composition of the pool of single men. We conclude that endogeneity issues make the sex ratio a potentially unreliable indicator of female marriage prospects.