Local Marriage Markets and the Marital Behavior of Black and White Women

Previous research has typically ignored the spatial dimension of marriage markets, focusing instead on highly aggregated data or on individual models of entry into marriage. A basic premise of this study is that national marriage rates are played out across local marriage-market areas that define female opportunities for marriage. Using local area data from the newly released 1980 Public Use Microdata Sample (D file), the article provides a direct test of several alternative explanations of U.S. marital behavior and of black and white differences in marriage rates. The analysis reveals that (a)local economic opportunities (including welfare)for females, spouse availability, and urbanization contribute significantly to spatial variations is female marriage rates, (b) the lcoal supply of economically "attractive" males plays an especially large role in the marital behaviors of U.S. black and white women, and (c) racial differences in marriage-market conditions accentuate, but do not explain completely, black-white differences in U.S. marriage rates. The study reinforces the view that local marriage-market conditions play a fundamental and often unappreciated role in the marital search process of American women.