The Well-Being Gap Between the Married and the Never Married: Time Trends and Macro Processes

Growing divorce and falling marriage rates in contemporary societies suggest that the institution of marriage is in crisis. Indeed, analyses for United States suggest that the quality of marriages, as well as the well-being premium of married over the never married persons decreased over time (Amato et al., 2003, Corra et al., 2009, Glenn, 1991, Glenn and Weaver, 1988, Rogers and Amato, 2000,Waite, 2000).

This paper examines how the well-being gap between the married and the never married changed over time and it tests the hypothesis that this trend has been shaped by the changing socio-economic conditions. In particular I focus on the hypothesis that the well-being gap narrowed because the level of economic specialization of spouses within marriage decreased. The idea that economic specialization builds the marriage premium has been formalized by Becker (1981) and is currently adopted in analyses of married couples (see, e.g. Stutzer and Frey, 2006).

I use data from theWorld Values Survey and the European Values Study for 87 countries on various levels of development, for a period of almost 30 years. Multilevel regression allows me to distinguish between the cross-country differences and the withincountry differences across time.

Results show that the life satisfaction gap between themarried and the nevermarried decreased over time at a rate that could close the well-being gap between themarried and the never married in about 25 years. The changes of economic specialization do not affect the well-being gap among women, and have a weak effect among men. Therefore the study does not support the hypothesis that the narrowing well-being gap between the married and the never married may be explained by lower level of economic specialization within marriage. This result is policy-relevant, as it shows that enhancing traditional gender arrangementsmay be inefficient way of improving conditions of married couples.