Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T23:13:52.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

SEX RATIOS, POLYGYNY, AND THE VALUE OF WOMEN IN MARRIAGE––A BECKERIAN APPROACH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2015

Shoshana Grossbard*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University, USA
Get access

Extract

Gary Becker's theories of marriage were mentioned as one of the reasons why he was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1992 and were emphasized by Becker: his first article on the family published in a major journal (Becker 1973) is a theory of marriage and the chapters on marriage in his influential Treatise on the Family (Becker 1981, 1991) come first. Becker's theoretical models of marriage all view marriages as small non-profit firms engaged in household production, thereby featuring one of the basic tenets of the New Home Economics that Becker pioneered with Jacob Mincer while both were at Columbia University in the 1960s (see Becker 1960, 1965; Mincer 1962, 1963).

Type
Special Section: Essays in honor of Gary Becker
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abramitzky, Ran, Delavande, Adeline and Vasconcelos, Luis (2011) Marrying up: The role of sex ratio in assortative matching. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3, 124157.Google Scholar
Anderson, Siwan (2007) The economics of dowry and brideprice. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, 151174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. (1960) An economic analysis of fertility. In Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries, a Conference of the Universities–National Bureau Committee for Economic Research. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S. (1965) A theory of allocation of time. Economic Journal 75, 493515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. (1973) A theory of marriage: Part I. Journal of Political Economy 81, 813846.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. (1974) A theory of marriage: Part II. Journal of Political Economy 82, 511–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. (1981) A Treatise on the Family, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bishai, David and Grossbard, Shoshana (2007) Far above rubies: the association between bride price and extramarital sexual relations in Uganda. Journal of Population Economics 23 (4), 11771188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bramham, Daphne (2009) The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect. Toronto, Canada: Vintage.Google Scholar
Bramham, Daphne (2010) Polygamy's many wives don't capture ‘market value’. Vancouver Sun, December 9.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip H. (2009) Dowry and intrahousehold bargaining: Evidence from China. Journal of Human Resources 44 (1), 2546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiappori, Pierre-Andre (2015) Gary Becker's contribution to the economics of matching and marriage. Journal of Demographic Economics 81 (1), 711.Google Scholar
Chiappori, Pierre-Andre, Fortin, Bernard and Chiappori, Guy Lacroix (2002) Marriage market, divorce legislation, and household labor supply. Journal of Political Economy, 110, 3771.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiappori, Pierre-Andre and Salanie, Bernard (2014) The Econometrics of Matching Models. Working paper, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Choo, Eugene and Siow, Aloysius (2006) Who marries whom and why. Journal of Political Economy 114 (1), 175201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Ronald (1971) Dominance and Defiance. Washington: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
d’Albis, Hyppolite and de la Croix, David (2012) Missing daughters, missing brides? Economics Letters 116, 358360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Croix, David and Mariani, Fabio (forthcoming) From polygyny to serial monogamy: A unified theory of marriage institutions. Discussion paper 6599, IZA.Google Scholar
Du, Qingyuan and Wei, Shang-Jin (2013) A theory of competitive saving motive. Journal of International Economics 91, 275289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossbard, Amyra (1976) An economic analysis of polygamy: The case of Maiduguri. Current Anthropology 17, 701–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossbard, Amyra (1978a) Towards a marriage between economics and anthropology and a general theory of marriage. American Economic Review 68, 3337.Google Scholar
Grossbard, Amyra (1978b) The economics of polygamy. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Grossbard, Amyra (1980) The economics of polygyamy. In DaVanzo, J. and Simon, J. (eds.), Research in Population Economics, vol. 2. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Grossbard, Shoshana Amyra (2010) How ‘Chicagoan’ are Gary Becker's economic models of marriage? Journal of History of Economic Thought 32 (3), 377395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossbard, Shoshana Amyra (2015a) The Marriage Motive: A Price Theory of Marriage. How Marriage Markets Affect Employment, Consumption and Savings. Springer, New york.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossbard, Shoshana Amyra (2015b) Polygamy and the regulation of marriage markets. In Bennion, Janet and Joffe, Lisa Fishbayn (eds.), The Polygamy Question. Logan (Ut.): Utah State University Press/University Press of Colorado, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Grossbard, Shoshana and Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina (2007) Marriage markets and women's labor force participation. Review of Economics of the Household 5, 249278.Google Scholar
Grossbard, Shoshana Amyra and Pereira, Alfredo Marvao (2010) Will women save more than men? A theoretical model of savings and marriage. CESifo working paper 3146, Fiscal Policy, Macroeconomics and Growth.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossbard-Shechtman, Amyra (1984) A theory of allocation of time in markets for labor and marriage. Economic Journal 94, 863–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossbard-Shechtman, Shoshana (1993) On the Economics of Marriage. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Grossbard-Shechtman, Shoshana and Lemennicier, Bertrand (1999) Marriage contracts and the law-and-economics of marriage: An Austrian perspective. Journal of Socio-Economics 28, 665690.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossbard-Shechtman, Shoshana and Neideffer, Matthew (1997) Women's hours of work and marriage market imbalances. In Persson, Inga and Jonung, Christina (eds.) Economics of the Family and Family Policies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Guttentag, Marcia and Secord, Paul F. (1983) Too Many Women: The Sex Ratio Question. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, Satoshi and Still, Mary C. (1999) Why monogamy? Social Forces 78 (1), 2550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mincer, Jacob (1962) Labor force participation of married women: A study of labor supply. In Lewis, H. Gregg (ed.), Aspects of Labor Economics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mincer, Jacob (1963) Market prices, opportunity costs, and income effects. In Christ, C. (ed.) Measurement in Economics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Porter, Maria (2014) How do sex ratios in China influence marriage decisions and intra-household resource allocation? Review of Economics of the Household, 135. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-014-9262-9.Google Scholar
Rahman, Anika and Toubia, Nahid (2000) Female Genital Mutilation: A Guide to Laws and Policies Worldwide. London and New York: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Rao, Vijayendra (1993) The rising price of husbands: A hedonic analysis of dowry increases in rural India. Journal of Political Economy 101 (4), 666677.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siow, Aloysius (2007) Communication by email to the author, October 30.Google Scholar
Tertilt, Michele (2005) Polygyny, Fertility, and Savings. Journal of Political Economy 113 (6), 1341–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Duncan (1990) Intra-household resource allocation: an inferential approach. Journal of Human Resources 25, 635664.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wei, Shan-Jin and Zhang, Xiaobo (2011) The competitive savings motive: evidence from rising sex ratios and savings rates in China. Journal of Political Economy 119 (3), 511564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weitzman, Lenore J. (1974) Legal regulation of marriage: tradition and change. California Law Review 62 (4), 11691288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolley, Frances (1996) Getting the better of Becker. Feminist Economics 2, 114120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar