Krashinsky, Harry A. 2004. "Do Marital Status and Computer Usage Really Change the Wage Structure?" Journal of Human Resources 39(3): 774-791.

This analysis uses several identification strategies and data sources to control for individual ability and determine the causal effect of marital status and computer usage on wages. Although data from the CPS, NLSY and a data set of identical twins show that there are large cross-sectional effects of these variables, new econometric specifications are applied to these data which indicate that marital status and computer usage are not important causal determinants of earnings, even after adjustments are made for measurement error and within-twin differences in ability.

Harry A. Krashinsky is a professor of industrial relations at the Centre for Industrial Relations, University of Toronto and a professor of management at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He would like to thank Orley Ashenfelter and Cecilia Rouse for providing both data for this analysis and helpful comments and suggestions. The author thanks David Card, Henry Farber, and Morley Gunderson for their advice, and an anonymous referee and participants of the Princeton Labor seminar series for their comments. He gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Connaught Fund, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He claims responsibility for all errors. The data contained in this article may be obtained between January 2005 and December 2008 from the author.