TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Lee, Wang-Sheng
AU  - McKinnish, Terra
        TI  - The Marital Satisfaction of Differently-Aged Couples
        PY  - 2017/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10863
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp10863
        AB  - We investigate how the marital age gap affects the evolution of marital satisfaction over the duration of marriage using household panel data from Australia. We find that men tend to be more satisfied with younger wives and less satisfied with older wives. Interestingly, women likewise tend to be more satisfied with younger husbands and less satisfied with older husbands. Marital satisfaction declines with marital duration for both men and women in differently-aged couples relative to those in similarly-aged couples. These relative declines erase the initial higher levels of marital satisfaction experienced by men married to younger wives and women married to younger husbands within 6 to 10 years of marriage. A possible mechanism is that differently-aged couples are less resilient to negative shocks compared to similarly-aged couples, which we find some supportive evidence for.
        KW  - marital satisfaction
KW  - marital duration
KW  - marital age gap
KW  - assortative matching
        ER  -