How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation
利用移民流作为自然实验，研究性别比例对美国第二代移民婚姻和劳动力市场的影响，发现高性别比例显著提高女性结婚率、降低女性劳动参与率，并提高男性收入和育儿家庭收入。
Sex ratios, i.e., relative numbers of men and women, can affect marriage prospects, labor \nforce participation, and other social and economic variables. But the observed association \nbetween sex ratios and social and economic conditions may be confounded by omitted \nvariables and reverse causality. This paper uses variation in immigrant flows as a natural \nexperiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants. \nThe flow of immigrants affected the second generation marriage market because second \ngeneration marriages were mostly endogamous, i.e., to members of the same ethnic group. \nThe empirical results suggest that high sex ratios had a large positive effect on the likelihood \nof female marriage, and a large negative effect on female labor force participation. Perhaps \nsurprisingly, the marriage rates of second generation men appear to be a slightly increasing \nfunction of immigrant sex ratios. Higher sex ratios also appear to have raised male earnings \nand the incomes of parents with young children. The empirical results are broadly consistent \nwith theories where higher sex ratios increase female bargaining power in the marriage \nmarket.