Date of Submission
Fall 2019
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Economics
Project Advisor 1
Michael Martell
Abstract/Artist's Statement
This Senior Project analyzes the wage effects of marriage for same-sex couples from a theoretical and empirical perspective using data from the 2012-2017 American Community Survey. I present the first empirical evidence of a wage effect to marriage for same-sex couples. I find strong evidence that this premium is driven by an increased degree of household specialization in married gay and lesbian couples. For both gay and lesbian couples, my results show a large and statistically significant return to marriage for the primary earner in same-sex couples. This raises several questions for future research and potential issues for the more egalitarian relationships sought by the gay liberation and lesbian feminism movements.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Nash, Peyton, "A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Wage Effects of Marriage in Same-Sex Households" (2019). Senior Projects Fall 2019. 55.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_f2019/55
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