Men's and women's economic activity and first marriage: Jews in Israel, 1987-1995

Using both analysis of the effect of lagged economic and current educational characteristics and analysis of life-course changes in these characteristics, this study provides insights into the theoretical debate concerning the relationships between men's and women's economic activity and transition to first marriage. Our findings support the men's economic stability hypothesis, the search hypothesis and the income pooling hypothesis; and counter the women's economic independence hypothesis, but only to a certain degree. For men, we find a positive effect of employment stability, and a positive effect of earnings, which increase over time. For women, the effect of the salary has an inverse U shape, and employment stability has positive effect on marriage. Over the life course, we find that men who have a continuum of stable employment have the highest odds of first marriage; while women reduce economic activity in anticipation of or due to marriage. Moreover, marriage is postponed for at least two years after educational accumulation is completed