This paper studies how rising male incarceration has affected women, through its effect
on the marriage market. Variation in the marriage market shocks arising from
incarceration is isolated using two facts: the tendency of people to marry within marriage
markets defined by the interaction of race, location and age; and the fact that increases in
incarceration have been very different across these three characteristics. Using a variety
of estimation strategies, including difference and fixed effects models and TSLS models
in which we use policy parameters to instrument for within marriage market changes in
incarceration, we find strong and consistent evidence that women have been affected by
rising incarceration precisely as the standard marriage market model would imply. Higher
male imprisonment has lowered the likelihood that women marry, and reduced the
quality of their spouses when they do, and caused a shift in the gains from marriage away
from women and towards men. The evidence suggests that women in affected markets
have increased their schooling and labor supply in response to these changes. |
