ABSTRACT
Labor economists have long noted that married men earn substantially more per hour worked than men who are not currently married. These cross-sectional wage differentials persist when controls are introduced for education, race, region, age, or work experience, and even occupation and industry. Typically, differentials are in the 10-40 percent range-roughly as large as race, firm-size, and union wage differentials, as well as differentials across industries, all of which have been extensively studied. The marriage premium is of particular interest for estimating gender-based discrimination in labor markets, as the male marital pay premium accounts for about one-third of estimated gender-based wage discrimination in the United States (e.g. Neumark, 1988).1 More generally, efforts to explain the marriage wage premium can contribute to achieving a better understanding of the determination of individual wages. Marital status differentials in labor market outcomes may also be of increasing interest in light of trends toward delaying (and perhaps foregoing) entry into first marriage, increased divorce rates, and sharply higher labor force participation rates among married women (especially those with young children). If marital status pay differentials reflect productivity differences, then changes in the marital status composition of the labor force potentially can affect the productivity of the labor force. While there is widespread agreement that cross-sectional marriage differen-
tials for men are sizable, there is much less agreement about their source. In fact, in a recent review of gender wage differentials, Goldin (1990, p. 102) concluded that “. . . the role of marriage in enhancing the earnings of male workers is still only dimly understood.” One major hypothesis is that earnings differentials result from productivity differentials: that is, marriage per se makes workers more productive (Greenhalgh, 1980; Becker, 1981, 1985; Kenny, 1983). Another hypothesis attributes these differentials to employer favoritism (Hill, 1979; Bartlett and Callahan, 1984), and a third to selection into marriage on the basis of wages or personal characteristics that are valued in labor markets (Keeley, 1977; Becker, 1981; Nakosteen and Zimmer, 1987).2
