Selection and Specialization in the Evolution of Marriage Earnings Gaps

We examine changes in marriage and earnings patterns across four cohorts born between 1936 and 1975 using data from Survey of Income and Program Participation panels linked to administrative data on earnings. We find that, for both men and women, marriage has become increasingly positively associated with education and earnings potential. We compare ordinary least squares and fixed-effect estimates of the earnings differential associated with marriage. We find that the marriage earnings gap fell for women in fixed-effect estimates, implying that the impact of specialization has diminished over time. We also find that increasingly positive selection into marriage overstates the reduction in the marriage earnings gap. Although marriage is no longer associated with lower earnings among women in our most recent cohort, the motherhood gap remains large. Among men, we find that the marriage premium actually increases for more recent birth cohorts in fixed-effects regressions.