The Effect of Attitudes and Economic Activity on Marriage

We use individual-level prospective data from Waves I and II of the U.S. National Survey of Families and Households to examine whether attitudes are responsible for sex and race differences in marriage rates net of economic opportunity. We find that persons expressing positive attitudes about marriage are significantly more likely to marry and favorable assessments of marriage accentuate the positive effects of economic attributes on marriage odds. However structural not cultural differences account for the large racial differences in marriage rates. This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1996 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. (EXCERPT)