ABSTRACT

The economics literature shows that there is a large wage premium for married males over single males and over both single and married women. This wage gap remains after controlling for age, experience, education and the other variables that are typically used to explain differential incomes. However, the male marriage premium is treated asymmetrically compared to gender or ethnicity wage gaps. Rather than viewing this residual as an unjustifi ed differential, the literature has gone to considerable efforts to justify the unexplained gap as due to differing productivity. The main arguments are that household arrangements provide greater market opportunities to married men and that the individuals selected into marriage have greater unobserved ability. Marriage does differ from ethnicity and gender since it is endogenous – individuals choose whether or not to get married. However, it is by no means clear that the direct productivity or indirect selection effects go in the direction that married men should earn more than comparable single men. In that sense, there should be no presumption that the observed wage gap is due to productivity rather than discrimination.