Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/219104 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8286
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
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.
Subjects: 
education
marriage
sex ratio
World War II
JEL: 
J12
N34
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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