ABSTRACT
The economics of marriage includes the application of economics to studies of marriage formation and dissolution, type of marriage, and decision making within marriage. In turn, decisions made by married couples can cover a wide range of topics, from labor-force participation and division of household labor to contraceptive use and savings. The economics of marriage applies to all these topics. The entry of economists into this field of application of economics started when Gary Becker published his economic theory of marriage in 1973. This path-breaking analysis was one of the reasons why Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1992. But economic concepts penetrated into the study of marriage before economists moved into this field: Sociologists of marriage had been importing economic concepts at least since the 1930s. This chapter presents a history of the application of economics to the study of marriage, including an assessment of the impact of Becker’s theory of marriage. The chapter then makes some comparisons between the economics of marriage and the economics of fertility, and between the economics and sociology of marriage. Particular differences between a sociological and economic approach to marriage are emphasized via the example of two theories of division of labor within marriage: the dependency model developed by sociologists and an economic model of Work-In-Marriage (WIM) markets that is in the New Home Economics (NHE) tradition.
