%0 Report
        %A Dessy, Sylvain
%A Djebbari, Habiba
        %T Career Choice, Marriage-Timing, and the Attraction of Unequals
        %D 2005
        %8 2005 Apr
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 1561
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp1561
        %X Both men and women wish to have a family and a rewarding career. In this paper, we show that the under-representation of women in high-powered professions may reflect a coordination failure in young women’s marriage-timing decisions. Since investing in a high-powered career imposes time strain, it precludes early participation in the marriage market. Delayed participation in the marriage market has a higher cost for women than for men because women have shorter fecundity horizons. Marriage prospects of high-powered women depend on the marriage-timing decisions of younger women. Under these assumptions, we show that women’s marriage-timing decisions exhibit strategic complementarities. Coordination failures in women’s marriage-timing decisions lead to persisting gender differences in career choices. Yet, differential fecundity is only necessary, but not sufficient to obtain gender inequality in high-powered professions. We discuss social changes that solve the coordination failure while achieving a Pareto-improvement in the society at large.
        %K supermodular game
%K strategic complementarities
%K coordination failure
%K marriage-timing
%K multiple equilibria
%K high-powered career