Why Have Women Become Left-Wing? The Political Gender Gap and the Decline in Marriage

The last three decades have witnessed the rise of a political gender gap in the United States wherein more women than men favor the Demo-cratic party. We trace this development to the decline in marriage, which we posit has made men richer and women poorer. Data for the United States support this argument. First, there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap – higher di-vorce prevalence reduces support for the Democrats among men but not women. Second, longitudinal data show that following marriage (divorce), women are less (more) likely to support the Democratic party. ∗We thank Lawrence Katz for very helpful and detailed comments. We have also bene-fitted from comments and discussions with Stephanie Aaronson, Timothy Besley, Francine