The Male Marriage Premium is Real

Getting married changes things; that shouldn't be controversial.

The male marriage premium and female marriage penalty persist after controlling for age, education, ethnicity, and other confounding variables. Also, given its magnitude (over 40%), even if we allow selection to account for three-quarters of the effect, we're still left with a more than 10% increase in income from being married. If so much of it was selection, why the 10% hit to women's income? It's because women probably de-emphasise their careers - which leads one to believe that men might be doing the opposite. Marriage may be doing something else - could it be that non-cognitive skills are raised via commitment, devotion, praise, criticism, etc.? We know children change women's priorities, so it's not a giant leap to assume that spouses do the same for men.