TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fernandez,Raquel
AU  - Fogli,Alessandra
AU  - Olivetti,Claudia
TI  - Marrying Your Mom: Preference Transmission and Women's Labor and Education Choices
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9234
PY  - 2002
Y2  - September 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9234
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9234.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Raquel Fernández
Department of Economics
New York University
19 West 4th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY  10012
Tel: 212/998-8908
Fax: 212/995-4186
E-Mail: raquel.fernandez@nyu.edu

Alessandra Fogli
University of Minnesota
1925 Fourth Street South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
E-Mail: afogli@umn.edu

Claudia Olivetti
Boston University
Department of Economics
270 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 617/613-1228
Fax: 617/353-4449
E-Mail: olivetti@bu.edu
AB  - This paper argues that the evolution of male preferences contributed to the dramatic increase in the proportion of working and educated women in the population over time. Male preferences evolved because some men experienced a different family model one in which their mother was skilled and/or worked. These men, we hypothesize, were more inclined to marry women who themselves were skilled or worked. Our model endogenizes the evolution of preferences in a dynamic setting and examines how it affected women's education and labor choices. We present empirical evidence based on GSS data that favors our transmission mechanism. We show that men whose mothers were more educated or worked are more likely to marry similar women themselves.
ER  -