Cohabitation and Child Development
Abstract:
In the U.S., college-educated couples cohabit less and marry at higher rates than other couples only if they have children. What explain s the higher marriage rates of these couples and what are the implications for child development? We show empirically that married women experience la rger childbirth penalties, work less in the labor market, and spend more ti me with their children compared to cohabiting women. Subsequently, their ch ildren are more likely to obtain a college degree. To rationalize these fac ts, we build an overlapping generations model of marriage, cohabitation, we alth, and child development. Parents are altruistic towards their children and invest both time and money into their development. This, in turn, incre ases the probability that a child completes college. Married couples in the model face lower separation probabilities, yet higher utility costs upon d ivorce and divide assets equally when they split. In this environment, coll ege-educated couples with children marry at higher rates for two reasons. F irst, marriage provides insurance against the higher human capital deprecia tion that college-educated women face when they invest time in children. Se cond, time and money investments are dynamic complements. This implies that the return from investing time is particularly high for couples that can m atch time investments early in life with high money investments at later st ages in the child’s development.
DTSTAMP:20260428T105556Z DTSTART:20230907T143000Z DTEND:20230907T160000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR