Spend Enough Time Searching for a Spouse

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The “search and matching” process is one people go through all the time. Buying a car, for example, means doing research on makes and models before driving away with a new set of wheels. A recent Timely Topics podcast examined this process in terms of getting married.

Senior Economist Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria found that people generally don’t put enough effort into searching for their optimal match when it comes to the marriage market. She noted that economists study this market because it affects income, which in turn could have implications for income inequality and taxation.

Regarding taxation, Restrepo-Echavarria explained: “Given that here in the U.S. you can file your taxes married filing jointly or filing separately, and all of these details, it matters a lot if there are big differences between the income of one spouse and the other one or the extreme case where one works and the other one doesn’t work at all.”

Additional Resources

• Timely Topics: An Economist’s Perspective on the Marriage Market
• On the Economy: Roundup: Research from around the St. Louis Fed
• On the Economy: Married Men Outearn Single Men (and Women as a Whole)