Crossing the threshold: Assessing the financial barrier to male marriageability

Abstract

This study is motivated by an intriguing puzzle found in the literature on family formation: quantitative analyses tend to show that marriage is usually financially beneficial for low-income single mothers and their children, but, in the relevant qualitative literature, such women often identify men's limited financial resources as a key reason for their remaining unmarried. I seek to reconcile these findings by examining the functional form of the relationship between men's earnings and their marital prospects. I find that this relationship is best described by models in which earnings are expressed as a percentile ranking relative to the earnings of one's peers. This finding persists across numerous alternative specifications and is robust to the use of an alternative method for calculating earnings. I conclude that many low-skilled men may, as a condition of becoming marriageable, be required to demonstrate that they are at least as capable as their peers of improving their partners' financial well-being.