Sex Ratios, Divorce Laws and the Marriage Market

We show how an interaction between the skewness of the sex ratio and the jump in divorce rates after a liberalization in divorce laws can obtain in a model of marriage market matching with non-transferable utility. This model is partly motivated by a significant cross-country correlation between the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: GUHA, Brishti
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1243
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/2242/viewcontent/sexratios.pdf
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
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Summary:We show how an interaction between the skewness of the sex ratio and the jump in divorce rates after a liberalization in divorce laws can obtain in a model of marriage market matching with non-transferable utility. This model is partly motivated by a significant cross-country correlation between these two variables. We also find that men’s hopes or fears about women’s marriage market odds are self-confirming under mutual consent, resulting in multiple equilibria. The multiplicity vanishes with a more skewed sex ratio or a liberalization of divorce laws. Our work sheds some light on the possible implications of divorce liberalization and pro-marriage policies.