WORKING PAPERS
Is Marriage A Normal Good? Evidence from NBA drafts [paper]
Media mentions: [Marginal Revolution]
Do improvements in male economic status increase marriage? This paper provides the first causal evidence that higher male earnings increase marriage rates, despite modern-day normalization of cohabitation. I tackle lack of data on permanent income shocks for men by examining a natural experiment surrounding the NBA’s annual player drafts. I exploit three institutional features: (1) high-quality expert forecasts of player draft order, (2) well-defined NBA salaries for each draft rank, and (3) drafting unpredictability, where player outcomes randomly deviate from expectations. I show that these “draft shocks” generate exogenous variation in players’ salaries – providing novel income treatments that are not only large and individual-specific but also opportunely occurring early in career and adult life, before family formation takes place. By constructing a new dataset tracking players’ major family decisions, I find that men are indeed more likely to marry when their earnings increase. For the 2004-2013 draft cohorts, a 10% increase in initial five-year salary raises likelihood of marriage by 8.9%. Excluding superstar draft picks yields larger and more significant results, reasonably suggesting that lower income men are more responsive to income shocks. I further argue that the increase in marriage rates is driven by the man’s demand and not his partner’s, as likelihood of premarital children decreases with income, suggesting increased male bargaining power.
Are China's ``Leftover Women'' really leftover? An investigation of marriage market penalties in modern-day China (with Loren Brandt, Hongbin Li, and Laura Turner).
[working paper] [slides]
A recent trend in Korea and Japan sees college-graduate women marrying later and at lower rates than less-educated women. In China, ``leftover women'' have also become a top policy concern. This paper finds, however, that China's higher-educated urban women attain marital outcomes more similar to those in the US than in other Asian Tiger countries: marrying later, but ultimately at rates comparable to those of less-educated women. Furthermore, for 1990-2009, we quantify marriage quality using the classic Choo-Siow (2006) estimator and find large returns to marrying later but minimal direct higher-education effects. Using the Choo (2015) dynamic estimator, we project future marriage rates to remain stable among the higher-educated and decline for lower-educated women.
Is Marriage A Normal Good? Evidence from NBA drafts [paper]
Media mentions: [Marginal Revolution]
Do improvements in male economic status increase marriage? This paper provides the first causal evidence that higher male earnings increase marriage rates, despite modern-day normalization of cohabitation. I tackle lack of data on permanent income shocks for men by examining a natural experiment surrounding the NBA’s annual player drafts. I exploit three institutional features: (1) high-quality expert forecasts of player draft order, (2) well-defined NBA salaries for each draft rank, and (3) drafting unpredictability, where player outcomes randomly deviate from expectations. I show that these “draft shocks” generate exogenous variation in players’ salaries – providing novel income treatments that are not only large and individual-specific but also opportunely occurring early in career and adult life, before family formation takes place. By constructing a new dataset tracking players’ major family decisions, I find that men are indeed more likely to marry when their earnings increase. For the 2004-2013 draft cohorts, a 10% increase in initial five-year salary raises likelihood of marriage by 8.9%. Excluding superstar draft picks yields larger and more significant results, reasonably suggesting that lower income men are more responsive to income shocks. I further argue that the increase in marriage rates is driven by the man’s demand and not his partner’s, as likelihood of premarital children decreases with income, suggesting increased male bargaining power.
Are China's ``Leftover Women'' really leftover? An investigation of marriage market penalties in modern-day China (with Loren Brandt, Hongbin Li, and Laura Turner).
[working paper] [slides]
A recent trend in Korea and Japan sees college-graduate women marrying later and at lower rates than less-educated women. In China, ``leftover women'' have also become a top policy concern. This paper finds, however, that China's higher-educated urban women attain marital outcomes more similar to those in the US than in other Asian Tiger countries: marrying later, but ultimately at rates comparable to those of less-educated women. Furthermore, for 1990-2009, we quantify marriage quality using the classic Choo-Siow (2006) estimator and find large returns to marrying later but minimal direct higher-education effects. Using the Choo (2015) dynamic estimator, we project future marriage rates to remain stable among the higher-educated and decline for lower-educated women.