In this age of deep scrutiny and wide debates over wage equality, one of
the groups closely examined was married men versus single men. The general
trend and records have overwhelmingly shown in concurrence that married
men make more money than unmarried men. Labor economists have also tested
and estimated that even when you control for age, education, and other demographic
effects, the marriage wage premium, or the difference between married men
and single men's wages, is as high as 10 per cent to 50 per cent. Why does
this phenomenon occur? Two broad classes of theory hold that employers possibly
discriminate in favor of married men; marriage makes men more productive,
or more-productive men are more likely to be married. More emphasis has
been put on evaluating if married men were really more productive.
This paper will focus on presenting the different arguments out there concerning
if married people are truly more productive than unmarried men by looking
at the wage variations between these two groups of men. First, the two generally
theories explaining married men's higher wage premium will be examine with
the first one being employer's favoritism toward married workers. Second,
Gary Becker's theory of specialization / comparative advantage between the
husband and the wife in the family will be discussed, followed by three
studies that have challenged Becker's hypothesis. Respectively, the first
study deals with the size of the change of the marriage wage premium according
to the nature of the spouse's labor supply decision; the second study examines
the difference of wage rate between the self-employed married men and the
salaried married men; the third study compares the difference in wage premium
between the currently married men who had lived with their wives before
marriage, the single men, and the other married men who lived with their
spouse only after marriage. Finally, a Becker-model-supporting study looking
at twins will be presented.
Discrimination occurs at the workplace when the employer offer married men
higher raises and promotions than single men. Knowing that the married men
have to provide for his family, most employers would automatically choose
to believe that married men are more stable, more responsible, and more
likely to make a long-term job commitment. On the contrary, looking at a
single counterpart possessing the same qualifications, many employers would
prejudice against these young souls as less trustable and thus less dependable
as an asset in the long-run investment. Such observed behavior has been
hard to substantiate because of the rare existence of available relevant
data. However, there have been studies such as the one reporting that the
marriage wage premium decreased by 10 percentage points between 1967 and
1988. (Korenman & Neumark, 1994). Because of these proven decreases
in the marriage wage premium, some people have been suspecting that the
apparent employer bias as well as changing society norm could have been
the big reasons. On the other hand, as marriage problems happen more and
more frequently, employers might have also started to realize that marriage
do not necessarily imply the bettered quality in a man. Hence, employers
might be less likely to discriminate in favor of the married man. In fact,
some employer might even start to favor single man if the job required constant
relocation or traveling.
The second theory for marriage wage premium is the hypothesis that married
men are more productive than single men based on Gary Becker's theory of
the family. Becker's original approach recognizes a direct relationship
between the time spent in a particular economic activity and the incentive
to invest in human capital specific to that activity. "Later, Becker
argues that, under constant or increasing returns to scale in commodity
production, difference in comparative advantage among otherwise identically
endowed individuals create different incentives to invest in specific human
capital and in allocation of time as well." (Loh, 1996) The central
point of Becker's theory of the family is specialization. With marriage,
division of labor would be possible in which the husband would be specializing
in market production, while the wife would be specializing in tasks relating
to the household. In this case, one spouse, typically the husband, can therefore
devote more effort to work-related responsibilities if the other spouse
is responsible for managing the home. Moreover, this kind of labor division
keeps the opportunity cost for both spouses at the lowest because both the
wife and the husband are respectively focusing on the work they have the
comparative advantage with. In contrast, it is nearly impossible for the
single unmarried men to undertake the same method of labor division between
market and household burdens. Instead, these single men would have to take
on the full responsibility of both the wage-earning market job and the necessary
household chores, causing a big downfall in their investments in human capital
relative to married men. Therefore, "the Becker model would predict
that married men are more productive and should therefore be paid more than
single men." (Loh, 1996).
In testing Becker's theory of the family, one of the attempted studies focuses
on the relationship between the size of the marriage wage premium and the
nature of the spouse's labor supply decision. According to Becker, working
men with nonworking wives should have a larger premium than unmarried men
or men with working wives because they have greater opportunities to accumulate
human capital; the reason being that nonworking wives must be relatively
more specialized to home production. On the other hand, the marriage wage
premium should be smaller if the husband and wife are both working and thus
the possibilities for specialization are lessened. (Gray, 1997) However,
results from multiple regressions have proven otherwise. The marriage wage
premium do not increase or decrease according to Becker's model as the wives'
working hours change. Originally, it was speculated that women with greater
education are more likely to make the choice of specializing in the wage-earning
workforce; thus the men would have to take over more household burdens,
resulting in a decrease in the wage premium. However, holding wives' schooling
as one of the dummies have again resulted in contrary numbers - comparing
with single men, married men whose wives' are high school dropouts earn
11.8 percent less, married men whose wives are high school graduates earn
4.3 percent more, those whose wives have some college earn 7.1 percent more,
and those whose wives are college graduates earn 11.5 percent more. (Cornwell
& Rupert, 1997) Clearly, men benefit from marrying better-educated women.
Then, how do we argue against the obvious expectation that working wives
would transfer more household burden to men, and would actually drag down
men's wage premium? First of all, families with higher-education realized
that they have higher opportunity costs to time spent in home production.
Hence, rationally, they would choose to have fewer children. Plus, many
of the educated families, with a higher income, generally hire servants
and nannies to take over the household chores. Therefore, overall, families
with both the husband and the wife highly educated would actually have a
relatively lessened household burden. (Loh, 1996) Secondly, it is highly
possible that a married man with a well-educated wife would have better
career opportunities and perform better in jobs, which would push up the
wage premium. In other words, a wife with educational background would be
able to offer the working husband helpful and effective advises regarding
job changes, transfers, and ways of handling assignments. (Korenman &
Neumark, 1994)
Another study examining the positive marriage premium of both self-employed
and salaried workers also challenges Becker's theory of the family. Supposedly,
according to Becker, if married men are truly more productive than single
men, then their greater productivity should be observed no matter where
or how they earn a living. (Loh, 1996) Holding all other factors constant,
the rate of wage premium should be the same for both categories of workers.
However, again, regressions have shown that self-employed married men are
performing worse. It is been speculated that the possible reason could be
that self-employed men may generally marry relatively late because they
are always busier with setting up and taking care of their own business.
Thus, their estimated benefit from marriage is lowered. Another reason could
be that "self-employed married men have larger alternative sources
of income upon which to rely than nonmarried men, the most obvious of which
if wife's earnings." (Gray, 1996) Having this financial back-up, self-employed
husbands usually chose self-employment for reasons other than maximizing
earnings. In addition, some potentially important differences in the nature
and quality of the income date between the two groups might have also contributed
to the resulting worse wage premium among the self-employed married man.
For example, self-employed workers are more likely to understate their gross
earnings relative to waged workers in order to lessen their tax liability.
Also, physical capitals are more often counted toward self-employed workers'
reported income. Furthermore, self-employed workers' income may not only
include their business gains, but also their losses as part of their labor
market earnings.
Finally, a third major study focusing on the comparison of wage premium
between the married men who have previously cohabited with the current wife
before marriage and for married men who did not. For the Becker hypothesis
to hold, the marriage premium should be higher for men who cohabited than
for men who did not. The main reason being that cohabitation increases the
length of time available for human capital investments as the division of
labor starts at the beginning of cohabitating and continues into marriage,
ensuing in higher wages. Even if no division of labor occurred during cohabitation,
the information gathered by the partners about each other's strengths and
weaknesses provides them with a head start on the specialization process
when the arrangement is formalized into marriage; men and women who did
not cohabit did not get such an information advantage. (Loh, 1996) Yet,
in contrast, the empirical evidences have shown that men in both groups
receive the same average wage premium, overturning Becker's specialization
hypothesis.
On the other side, a very recent study looking at monozygotic, or identical,
twins, although not necessarily supporting Becker's specialization theory,
still prove that marriage does indeed increase the wage level. Twins are
particularly picked as the sample size because they generally have the same
upbringing and they have the same genetic endowment in terms of having identical
underlying physical and mental capabilities. Hence, twins reasonably have
very similar productivity; even at times of employers' favoritism over some
characteristics, monozygotic twin would undergo the same amount of bias,
making it possible to conclude that the cause is marriage if any wage difference
between married and unmarried twins occurred. As the examination of 136
pairs of monozygotic twins (85 per cent were married, and 23 per cent of
the cases, one twin was married while the sibling was not) turned out, it
is found that married twins had 26 per cent higher wages than their unmarried
siblings, controlling for education. Similar results were also found as
the controlled factors extended to include divorced status, widowed status,
spouse's work experience, number of children, and wage-earning history.
(Antonovics & Town, 2004) Therefore, the results have suggested that
among the very identical men, marriage will cause an increase in wages.
Studies have not consistently found evidences of a correlation between marriage
and men's productivity. The general studies examining the difference of
wage rates between married men and unmarried men have always found a higher
married men's wage premium. Gary Becker argued that married men are highly
inclined to making higher wages because of specialization in human capital
investment and household division of labor. However, when controlling for
other factors that might affect the marriage wage premium or men's productivity
such as wives' education, forms of married men's employment, and cohabitation,
Becker's family model is breaking down. Nevertheless, studies focusing on
this issue are ceaseless because of the continuing disagreeing evidences.
Some deal with employer's discrimination, others look at identical twins.
Because of the difficulty in collecting some of the data (such as the study
focusing on employers' prejudice), many of the reported results are only
substantial enough to be suggestive conclusions. Therefore, the question,
does marriage truly make men more productive?, is still in the process of
being answered.
Antonovics, Kate and Robert Town; (2004), "Are All the Good Men Married? Uncovering the Sources of the Marital Wage Premium," The American Economic Review, May 2004
Cornwell, Christopher and Peter Rupert; (1997), "Unobservable Individual Effects, Marriage and the Earnings of Young Men", Economic Inquiry, Vol. 35, April 1997, pp. 285-294.
Gray, Jeffrey S.; (1997) "The Fall in Men's Return to Marriage: Declining Productivity Effects or Changing Selection?", The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1997, pp. 481-504
Korenman, Sanders and David Neumark, (1991) "Does Marriage Really Make Men More Productive?", in Journal of Human Resources, vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 282-307
Loh, Eng Seng (1996), "Productivity Differences and the Marriage
Wage Premium for White Males" in the Journal of Economic Resources,
Summer 1996, vol. 31, no. 3, pp 566 590.
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