Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14698
Authors: Erich Battistin; Sascha O. Becker; Luca Nunziata
Abstract: We investigate how changes in the sex ratio induced by World War II affected the bargaining patterns of Italian men in the marriage market after the war. Marriage data from the first wave of the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey (1997) are matched with newly digitized information on war casualties coming from Italian National Bureau of Statistics. We find that men in post-war marriages were better off in terms of their spouse’s education, this gain amounting to about half a year of education. By considering heterogeneity across provinces, we find that the effects were more pronounced in more rural provinces, mountainous provinces, and those with a higher share of population employed in agriculture. This suggests that here, the shock provided for a more fundamental change in marriage patterns compared to urban, lower-lying, and less agricultural provinces where marriage markets might have been more flexible to begin with.
Keywords: education; marriage; sex ratio; world war II
JEL Codes: J12; N34
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Wartime casualties (H56) | Changes in the sex ratio (J11) |
| Changes in the sex ratio due to World War II (J19) | Shifts in marriage patterns among Italian men (J12) |
| Changes in the sex ratio (J11) | Increased likelihood of marrying women with higher educational attainment (I24) |
| Wartime casualties (H56) | Increased likelihood of marrying women with higher educational attainment (I24) |