Cohort Size and the Marriage Market: Explaining Nearly a Century of Changes in US Marriage Rates
Abstract
We document that the US marriage market is characterized by two systematic empirical patterns. First, there is a quantitatively large, strong, and persistent negative relationship between changes in cohort size and marriage rates of women. Second, the same negative correlation holds for men. We then establish the features a model should possess to generate these patterns. A standard matching model with search frictions is rejected by the data because it produces a negative relationship for women but a positive relationship for men. We generalize the standard model to show under what conditions it rationalizes both patterns.