TY - JOUR

T1 - The rise and fall of divorce

T2 - a sociological extension of becker's model of the marriage market

AU - Andersen, Signe Hald

AU - Hansen, Lars Gårn

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - Despite its popularity, Gary Becker’s model of the marriage market does not fully predict empirical correlations between married women’s labor market participation and aggregate divorce rates. In this article, we show how a simple extension of Becker’s model inspired by sociological theory improves the model’s predictive power. We extend Becker’s model to account for matching agents’ preferences for partner specialization, and as a novelty, we introduce a sociologically inspired coordination mechanism for this trait. We show that these extensions of Becker’s model improve its predictive power in terms of explaining empirical trends in divorce rates.

AB - Despite its popularity, Gary Becker’s model of the marriage market does not fully predict empirical correlations between married women’s labor market participation and aggregate divorce rates. In this article, we show how a simple extension of Becker’s model inspired by sociological theory improves the model’s predictive power. We extend Becker’s model to account for matching agents’ preferences for partner specialization, and as a novelty, we introduce a sociologically inspired coordination mechanism for this trait. We show that these extensions of Becker’s model improve its predictive power in terms of explaining empirical trends in divorce rates.

U2 - 10.1080/0022250X.2011.556768

DO - 10.1080/0022250X.2011.556768

M3 - Journal article

VL - 36

SP - 97

EP - 124

JO - Journal of Mathematical Sociology

JF - Journal of Mathematical Sociology

SN - 0022-250X

IS - 2

ER -