We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 17443
November 2024
Peer Effects and Marriage Formation
Abigail Wozniak, Michael T. Baker, Susan P. Carter

A large literature links marriage to later life outcomes for children and adults. Marriage has declined markedly in the U.S. over the last 50 years, particularly among individuals with less than a baccalaureate degree, yet the causes of the decline are not well understood. In this paper we provide causal evidence on one potential mechanism for the observed marriage rate patterns: peer effects. We use administrative personnel data from the U.S. Army to study how peers influence marriage decisions for junior enlisted soldiers arriving to their first assignment from 2001-2018, a setting which features substantial variation in peer group marriage rates and conditional random assignment to peer groups. We find that exposure to the 75th versus 25th percentile of our identifying variation in peer marriage rates increases the likelihood that an unmarried individual marries within two years of assignment by 1.9 percent. We show that lateral peers and near supervisors alike influence marriage decisions and we argue that our results are most consistent with conformist behavior, where peers influence marriage decisions through role-modeling and group social norms. The effect of peers is larger for men, and for Black and Hispanic men, in particular. While the effect of peers attenuates after 36 months for white and Hispanic men, effects persist and continue to grow over time for Black men, suggesting that our results are not fully explained by re-timing. We benchmark our estimates against previous research and argue that the effect of peers on individual marriage decisions is economically meaningful.

Kommunikation
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Netzwerkkoordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

Über das IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)