MEN WHO TIE THE KNOT MAKE A LOT
MORE MONEY THAN SINGLE ONES -- BUT WHY?
July 29, 2004
By Hal R. Varian, New York Times
Married men make more money than single men. A lot more: Labor
economists
estimate that even when you control for age, education and
other demographic
effects, the "marriage wage premium" is 10 percent
to 50 percent.
The question is why.
There are two broad classes of explanation. One view holds
that marriage
causes men to receive higher wages. The other view is that
higher wages are
simply correlated with, but not caused by, marital status.
There are a variety of reasons that marriage might cause
higher wages.
It might be that employers prefer married men to single men
because they are
more productive. After all, they have spouses who share
responsibility for
household chores and provide other sorts of support and
assistance. Single
men just have that empty apartment.
On the other hand, it could be that employers have an
irrational prejudice
for married men. Employers might view married men as more
productive, more
reliable and more committed, whether or not these things are
true.
Whether employer preference for married men is accurate is
irrelevant.
Marriage has a causal effect on wages: Single men who choose
to marry will
tend to receive higher wages.
The other class of theories holds that being married is simply
correlated
with higher wages. Just as with the causal theories, the
correlation can
work through productivity effects or through prejudice.
It may be that women are attracted to stable, reliable,
hard-working men.
Employers also find such men attractive, so they want to hire
them and
promote them. If this were true, then we would see married men
having higher
wages. But it isn't that marriage caused those higher wages --
rather, the
same things that caused marriage caused the higher wages.
Such a correlation could also arise from irrelevant
characteristics. Maybe
women prefer good-looking guys, and employers also like
handsome men, even
in cases where appearance has nothing to do with job
productivity.
In this case we would also observe that the same men who are
more likely to
be married are also more likely to be employed and have higher
wages.
In the correlation explanations of the marriage premium, the
same factors
that caused the men to marry caused them to get higher wages
-- but there is
no direct causal link between marriage and high wages.
To drive this point home, suppose Hamlet is considering
proposing to
Ophelia, but is consumed with doubts. "To be married or
not to be married,
that is the question."
If the causal theories are correct, then if Hamlet proposes
and Ophelia
accepts, his future wages would be higher on average than if
he stayed
single. If the correlation theories are correct, then choosing
to marry
would have no effect on Hamlet's future wages, and he may as
well remain
single.
Recently, two economists, Kate Antonovics of the University of
California-San Diego and Robert Town of the University of
Minnesota, have
come up with a clever way to decide between the causal and the
correlation
theories. Their paper, "Are all the good men married?
Uncovering the sources
of the marital wage premium," appeared in the May issue
of The American
Economic Review.
Their approach is based on looking at monozygotic, or
identical, twins. The
authors argue that twins have the same genetic endowment and
(usually) the
same upbringing. Because twins have the same underlying
physical and mental
capabilities, they should have similar productivity. Even if
employers are
biased toward certain irrelevant characteristics, monozygotic
twins should
be affected by such biases equally.
Hence, differences in wages between married and unmarried
twins should
control for most of the effects that might cause a spurious
correlation
between marriage and wages. If a married twin has a higher
wage than his
single brother, the difference is probably really caused by
marriage, not
just correlated with it.
The economists drew on a unique dataset, the Minnesota Twins
Registry, which
tracked most twins born in Minnesota between 1936 and 1955. In
the
mid-1990s, the staff at the registry sent the twins a
questionnaire asking
questions about their socioeconomic status.
Using this data, the researchers were able to construct a
sample of 136
pairs of monozygotic twins, of whom 85 percent were married.
In 23 percent
of the cases, one twin was married while the other wasn't.
They extracted data from the survey on the hourly wages, weeks
worked per
year, age and educational attainment of the men in their
sample and compared
these with comparable figures for all American males. The
results implied
that their sample was reasonably representative of the
nation's population.
Consistent with other studies, they found a significant
marriage premium:
controlling for education, age and other variables, they found
that the
married men in their sample earned about 19 percent more than
unmarried men.
They then examined just the wage differences between twins,
while still
controlling for education. They found that married twins had
26 percent
higher wages than their unmarried siblings. Hence, even among
very similar
men, those who are married earn substantially more.
The authors found essentially the same results if they
factored in divorced
or widowed status, or added variables such as a spouse's work
experience,
number of children and wage history.
That result suggests that marriage really does have a causal
effect on
wages. Of course, it is not completely conclusive. After all,
maybe the
married twin really is different in some way from his brother,
and that
difference is important to both potential spouses and
employers. Still, it
is suggestive evidence.
So, as far as Hamlet is concerned, the advice he would get
from a labor
economist would be this: Put your doubts aside and marry
Ophelia. Stop
moping around the house and go get a job. You may not be any
happier, but at
least you'll make more money than if you stay single.
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