For Richer or Poorer, as Long as You Both Shall Live: Gendered Effects of Marital Status Change on Wages over the Life Course

Abstract

Marriage remains a normative experience for adults in the United States today, despite substantial changes in family formation and dissolution patterns in recent decades. Such persistence offers a valuable opportunity for identifying informative patterns that affect families over time. This dissertation focuses on the connection between marital status and marital status change on wages, as well as how gender, race and ethnicity, and frequency of religious attendance impacts this connection. I first examine proximate wage effects of marital status change using Current Population Survey Merged Outgoing Rotation Groups data from 2000–2023. Using within- and between-effects analyses, I find that the short-term effects of marital status change are far greater for men than they are for women, and that for men, having been married—or what might be called marriageability—matters more than actually being married. Second, I use group-based trajectory models and 30 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to identify seven discrete trajectories of marital status change that differ according to the timing, duration, and frequency of transitions between marital statuses that individuals experience from ages 18 to 65. I find that Black individuals are far less likely to enter marriage at any point in their adulthood compared to other ethno-racial groups, women are more likely to remain unmarried following marital dissolution compared to men, and those who frequently attend religious services are more likely to be married later in life compared to those with infrequent attendance. In my third set of analyses, I investigate the association of trajectories on wages and find substantial variation across marital status trajectories, paying particular attention to gender variation. I find that women experience far less variation in wages according to marital status trajectory compared to men, that marriageability in men seems to pay significant dividends, and that a sizeable gender pay gap is present for all trajectories except for individuals who never marry. Together, these findings offer support for a life course of marriage framework to aid in counting the ways marriage can have stratifying effects. By treating marital status as a dynamic process rather than a one-time event, this life course of marriage framework adds depth, breadth, and temporal understanding of how inequality can shape and be shaped by marital status.