Occupational Sex Integration and Men’s Marriage Formation: Is the Economic Disadvantage Compensated by Marriage Market Advantage?

Content introduction：

Occupational gender integration is an important change in the distribution of men and women in the settings where marital sorting takes place.  This study draws a sample of 5,599 men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and examines the relationship between the proportion of female workers in an occupation and the likelihood of marrying for male workers.  Fixed effect discrete-time hazard model estimates support the propinquitous proposition that men in more female occupations have more contact opportunities with women at occupational situs and thus have a greater chance of marrying within their professional field.  But the marriage market function of occupational situs is rather small, as only 4% of marriages occur between people employed in the same occupation.  Instead, the devaluation of women’s work simply because the incumbents are primary women leads men in female-dominated occupations to earn less and be the least likely to marry.