Happiness is when your students get good publications

High-Powered Careers and Marriage: Can Women Have It All?

Sylvain Dessy, Université Laval and CIRPÉE
Habiba Djebbari, Université Laval, IZA and CIRPÉE

Abstract

Why do women often choose family over career? Can't they, like men, have both? At work, women are still under-represented in high-powered professions in most societies. At home, women tend to devote more time to their families than their spouses do. What explains these imbalances? Our model builds upon the fact that women's fertility, unlike men's, declines sharply past age 35. As a result, women may prefer marrying early in order to secure a match rather than investing in their careers while delaying and potentially missing out on marriage. Women's failure to coordinate towards delaying marriage may explain the imbalances within the family and in the labor market.

Dessy, Sylvain and Djebbari, Habiba (2010) "High-Powered Careers and Marriage: Can Women Have It All?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1 (Advances), Article 42.

You can read the whole thing here.

Habiba is a student of mine from Maryland and in the running to be my first student to get tenure.