This paper investigates how the World War II exogenous shock on the sex ratio, i.e. the ratio of males to females, affected bargaining patterns in the marriage market in Italian provinces in post war years. By matching marriage data from the first wave of the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey (1997) with newly digitized information on war casualties coming from ISTAT (1957), we find that post-war marriages are characterized by greater gains by males in terms of spouse’s education, the gain amounting to around half a year of education. However, only the males who were able to exploit their post-war market advantage in more dense marriage markets did actually obtained better matches. On the other hand, cultural factors, as embodied by the traditional agricultural sector, did not seem to play any role in shaping the effect of the war shock.
More Choice for Men? Marriage Patterns after World War II in Italy
BATTISTIN, ERICH;NUNZIATA, LUCA
2012
Abstract
This paper investigates how the World War II exogenous shock on the sex ratio, i.e. the ratio of males to females, affected bargaining patterns in the marriage market in Italian provinces in post war years. By matching marriage data from the first wave of the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey (1997) with newly digitized information on war casualties coming from ISTAT (1957), we find that post-war marriages are characterized by greater gains by males in terms of spouse’s education, the gain amounting to around half a year of education. However, only the males who were able to exploit their post-war market advantage in more dense marriage markets did actually obtained better matches. On the other hand, cultural factors, as embodied by the traditional agricultural sector, did not seem to play any role in shaping the effect of the war shock.
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