The Dynamics of the Marriage Market: A Historical Examination of the Impact of Forces of Attraction and Supply on Marriage in the United States

Audrey N. Beck, Duke University

Whether and how individuals shift their marriage market in response to the relative availability of partners is a largely unaddressed issue in the literature on marriage markets and assortative mating. A historical investigation into this issue can shed considerable light not only on our understanding of marital behavior but also on the lingering racial differences in the propensity to marry. This paper will utilize a method developed by Qian and Preston (1993) to decompose age, race and education-specific marriage groups into the proportion due to supply within groups and attraction within a group. This two-sex model has the distinct advantage of being able to include not just married partners, but also the supply of available mates. Using weighted least squares regression, I will then examine the extent to which black and white women shift their marriage choices in response to supply of men.