Author(s): Britton Davis
Mentor(s): Joseph Price
Institution BYU
We investigate the impact of delaying marriage on future income using historical data from the 1900–1940 United States Decennial Censuses. While existing literature suggests that marriage positively affects income, little is known about the financial implications of postponing marriage. We address that gap in knowledge by employing an instrumental variable framework, exploiting the effect of serving in WWI on age of marriage as an exogenous instrument, to determine the effect of delaying marriage on income. We leverage the Census Tree project to link individuals across census years, finding their siblings, age of first marriage, veteran status, and income. Furthermore, we control for potential biases in linkage probabilities through a weighting algorithm based on Bailey et al. (2019). Preliminary evidence suggests that delaying marriage has a positive and significant effect on income. This project contributes to the economic history literature by providing new insights into the opportunity costs of early marriage and the long-term economic trade-offs of delaying marriage during the early 20th century.