TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bloom,David E.
AU  - Bennett,Neil G.
TI  - Modeling American Marriage Patterns
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3425
PY  - 1990
Y2  - August 1990
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3425
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3425.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David E. Bloom
Harvard School of Public Health
Department of Global Health and Population
665 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617/432-0866
Fax: 617/432-6733
E-Mail: dbloom@hsph.harvard.edu

Neil G. Bennett
Baruch College/
CUNY Institute for Demographic Research
Box D-901
One Bernard Baruch Way
New York, NY  10010
Tel: 646/660-6779
Fax: 646/660-6784
E-Mail: Neil.Bennett@baruch.cuny.edu
AB  - This paper investigates the application of the three-parameter, Coale-McNeil marriage model and some related hyper-parameterized  specifications to data on the first marriage patterns of American women. Because the model is parametric, it can be used to estimate the parameters of the marriage process, free of censoring bias, for cohorts that have yet to complete their first marriage experience. Empirical evidence from three surveys is reported on the ability of the model to replicate and project observed marriage behavior. The results indicate that the model can be a useful tool for analyzing cohort marriage data and that recent cohorts are showing relatively strong proclivities to both delay and forego marriage. Consistent with earlier work, the results also indicate that education is a powerful covariate of the timing of first marriage and that race is a powerful covariate of its incidence.
ER  -