Does Marriage affect Birth Outcomes? Evidence from Change in Marital Fertility Over Time

• In Event: 2452 - New Insights and Trends in Relationship Formation

Abstract

Research shows a positive association between mother's marital status and children's birth outcomes. This association may reflect a positive causal effect of marriage or observed and unobserved selectivity of married mothers. We suggest that both the effect and the selectivity of marriage should change over time as marital fertility becomes less normative. Using the case of Chile, where marital fertility dropped sharply from 66% of all births in 1990 to 28% in 2014, we find that the “marriage birthweight premium" has declined steadily, to almost disappear in 2014. About half of the marriage premium is driven by change in the observed sociodemographic characteristics of mothers who marry. In order to examine the role of unobserved selectivity in the marriage premium, we construct a matched dataset of siblings born between 2011 and 2014 and apply methods for panel data to compare the birth outcomes across marital status of the same mother. Findings from fixed effects and first-difference models suggest that, by 2014, marriage does not have an effect on birth outcomes.

Authors

• Florencia Torche, Stanford University

• Alejandra Abufhele, University of Pennsylvania