Income and Family Events: Getting Married

This paper presents a test of a model that takes male income as a dependent variable. Measures of class background, educational and occupational achievement explain only 22 percent of variability among white male income, and even less among nonwhite men. We conclutde that using education, occupation, or both as proxy measures for male income is unsatisfactory. Further, the' causal order of these variables has clear implications for the study of family events. An examination of data measuring the propensity to marry indicates that neither educational attainment nor occupational status is useful in accounting for differences in the percent of men who remain single. Controlling age, male marriage rates are closely related to income at the time of the marriage. These findings hold for both white and nonwhite men.