Pierre André Chiappori (Columbia) "Family Economics" - Cemmap

9. Investment in Schooling and the Marriage Market 421
and in the market that favor women, must be “armed” with additional
schooling to overcome norms and beliefs that originate in the past.
We should add that there are other possible reasons for why women
may invest in schooling more than men. One reason is that there are more
women than men in the marriage market at the relatively young ages at
which schooling is chosen, because women marry younger. Iyigun and Walsh
(2007) have shown, using a similar model to the one discussed here, that in
such a case women will be induced to invest more than men in competition
for the scarce males. Another reason is that divorce is more harmful to
women, because men are more likely to initiate divorce when the quality of
match is revealed to be low. This asymmetry is due to the higher income
of men and the usual custody arrangements (see Chiappori and Weiss,
2007). In such a case, women may use schooling as an insurance device
that mitigates their costs from unwanted divorce.