Volume 30, Number 1 (Winter) 1995
Wood, Robert G. 1995. "Marriage Rates and Marriageable Men: A Test of the Wilson Hypothesis." Journal of Human Resources 30(1):163-193.
This article examines the hypothesis that recent declines in black marriage rates have been driven by a declining pool of high-earning, young black men. Using 1970 and 1980 SMSA-level Census data to estimate a fixed-effect model of black marriage rates, I find that declines in the pool of "marriageable" black men are responsible for only a small fraction of the decline in black marriage rates. My estimates suggest that this decline in the number of high-earning, young black men explains only 3 to 4 percent of the decline in black marriage rates during the 1970s.
Robert G. Wood is a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the views of MPR. Support for this research was provided by a doctoral fellowship granted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The author wishes to thank his dissertation committee members, Charles Brown, Sheldon Danziger, David Lam, and particularly his chair, Gary Solon, for their many helpful suggestions. He would also like to thank three anonymous referees for their useful comments. The data used in this article may be obtained beginning in July 1995 through July 1998 from the author at Mathematica Policy Research, P.O. Box 2393, Princeton, N.J. 08543-2393.
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