Contextual Influences on Young Men's Transition to First Marriage

Competing theories of marriage formation are evaluated by merging several contextual variables, primarily marriage market characteristics from the 1980 census, with men's marital histories observed between 1979 and 1984 in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Discrete-time event history models reveal that, net of conventional individual-level predictors, a shortage of prospective partners in the local marriage market impedes white men's transition to first marriage. Women's aggregate economic independence, measured in terms of the proportion of females in the local marriage market who are employed and in terms of the size of average AFDC payments, also diminishes men's marriage propensities. Although earnings and home ownership facilitate men's marital transitions, racial differences in socioeconomic and marriage market characteristics account for relatively little of the substantial racial difference in marriage rates.