Delayed entry into first marriage and marital stability: Further evidence on the Becker-Landes-Michael hypothesis

AbstractBACKGROUNDIn their pioneering research, Becker, Landes, and Michael (1977) found that beyond age 30 there is a positive relationship between women's age at first marriage and marital instability. They interpreted this finding as a "poor-match effect" emerging when the biological clock begins to tick.OBJECTIVEOur objective was to ascertain with more recent data whether or not there is evidence of a poor match effect and if so, whether it is associated with higher marital instability.METHODSWe used data on non-Hispanic white women from the 2006-2010 National Surveys of Family Growth (NSFG) (N = 3,184).RESULTSWe found evidence of the existence of a poor-match effect: women who delay marriage disproportionately make unconventional matches, which are generally associated with high marital instability. We also found, however, that their unions are very solid. Both of these results were consistent with earlier findings for the 1995 and 2002-2003 NSFG cycles. In attempting to explain this puzzle, we proposed and tested competing hypotheses. We found that the destabilizing effects associated with indicators of unconventional matches are also present in marriages contracted late, but are dwarfed by the stabilizing influences associated with higher levels of education and older ages.CONCLUSIONSThis paper contributes to our understanding of the determinants of marital instability and the poor match effect by providing a new interpretation for the puzzle described above.COMMENTSOur findings have implications for analyses of changes over time in the extent of positive assortative mating in the marriage market, and for the extensive literature showing that heterogamy in traits that are complementary in the context of marriage is destabilizing - heterogamous marriages contracted at a late age are likely to be stable.1. IntroductionThe steady increase in age at first marriage has been one of the most salient demographic trends in the U.S. landscape in recent decades. The median age rose from 20 and 23 for women and men, respectively, in 1950-1960, to 26 and 28 in 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Several factors contributed to this trend, including the development of oral contraception and the legalization of abortion, the growth in cohabitation, changes in household technology, and the decline in the male-female wage gap (Cherlin 2004; Goldin and Katz 2002; Greenwood and Guner 2008; Isen and Stevenson 2012). The focus of this paper is on the growing number of women in the U.S. who are entering marriage in their late twenties or thereafter: What are the characteristics of the unions that they form? Are such unions stable?Two main theoretical concepts are relevant to these questions. First, Becker (1974) developed the idea that in the optimal sorting, there is positive assortative mating (mating of likes) for traits that are complementary within the context of marriage (e.g., education, age, religion, race/ ethnicity) and negative assortative mating (mating of people who are dissimilar) for those that are substitutes (e.g., productivity characteristics). When such sorting does not occur along important dimensions, so that there is a mismatch and the resulting gains from marriage are low, the outcome is a high probability of divorce (Becker, Landes, and Michael 1977; Becker 1990). Expanding on these insights, Oppenheimer (1988) advanced the notion of a "maturity effect:" marriages contracted at an early age are at a higher risk of disruption because they are more likely to be based on mistaken expectations. At young ages individuals have inadequate self-knowledge and are uncertain about their own and their partners' potential trajectories. Moreover, some of their adult attributes have not yet emerged, making assortative mating by such traits impossible. The maturity effect postulates that postponement of entry into first marriage has a stabilizing influence for all these reasons. …