Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/223659 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 13217
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
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 postwar 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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