Fertility Shocks and Equilibrium Marriage-Rate Dynamics

Why did the marriage probability of single females in France after World War 1 rise 50% above its pre-war average, despite a 33% drop in the male/female singles ratio? We conjecture that war-time disruption of the marriage market generated an abnormal abundance of men with relatively high marriage propensities. Our model of matching over the lifecycle, when calibrated to pre-war data and two war-time shocks, succeeds in matching the French time path under the additional assumption of a pro-natalist post-war preference shock. We conclude that endogeneity issues make the sex ratio a potentially unreliable indicator of female marriage prospects.

Keywords: Family Economics, Household Formation, Marriage, Fertility.

JEL Classification: D10, E13, J12, J13, O11

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Knowles, John and Vandenbroucke, Guillaume, Fertility Shocks and Equilibrium Marriage-Rate Dynamics (2015-03-01). FRB St. Louis Working Paper No. 2015-7, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2646146 or http://dx.doi.org/10.20955/wp.2015.007