Degree Name

Department

Economics

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Defense Date

2025-03-10

Publication Date

2025-03-13

First Faculty Advisor

Joseph Price

First Faculty Reader

Riley Wilson

Honors Coordinator

Mark Showalter

Keywords

instrumental variable, marriage timing, census data, world war one, economic history, family fixed effects

Abstract

I investigate the impact of delaying marriage on future income using historical data from the 1900–1940 United States Decennial Censuses. While existing literature suggests that marriage positively affects income, little is known about the financial implications of postponing marriage. I address that gap in knowledge by employing an instrumental variable framework, exploiting the effect of serving in WWI on age at marriage as an exogenous instrument, to determine the effect of delaying marriage on personal income. I leverage the Census Tree project to link individuals across census years, finding their siblings, age at first marriage, veteran status, and income. I then construct a dataset of WWI veterans and their brothers, controlling for family fixed effects and isolating the effect of interest. Furthermore, I control for potential biases in linkage probabilities through a weighting algorithm based on Bailey et al. (2019). Preliminary evidence suggests that delaying marriage has a positive and significant effect on personal income. This project contributes to the economic history literature by providing new insights into the opportunity costs of early marriage and the long-term economic trade-offs of delaying marriage during the early 20th century.