Data indicate that married individuals have lower mortality rates and are reported to be healthier than singles. However, drawing the conclusion that marriage inherently improves health can be misleading. A key challenge in estimating the effect of marriage on health lies in disentangling self-selection into marriage from the protective effects of marriage. The complexity arises from the selection of the healthier or unhealthier into marriage or into single through divorce. The objective of this paper is to explain the health gap between married and single individuals using an equilib-rium model of marriage search and matching. The model takes into account the endogeneity of mar-riage choice and different household choices on time, consumption and medical investment that both man/woman and single/married couples are likely to face during their life cycles. The model, which incorporates health-driven selection in the marriage market, is structurally estimated by matching model-generated moments with those observed in the data. Using the estimated model, several coun-terfactual scenarios are analyzed, such as eliminating the gender wage gap, removing age preferences in the marriage market, and altering Pareto weights to explore the impact of household allocations on the health trajectories of married couples. The findings suggest that married households benefit from economies of scale in home production and achieve higher efficiency in medical investments com-pared to single households. Furthermore, within married households, the advantages of marriage are not uniform across genders. Through counterfactual analysis, we identify changes in Pareto weights as the most significant factor in affecting the health disparity associated with marital status.

Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) is the largest income transfer program for protecting the working-age population in the US from being unable to work by negative health shock. Despite its substantial growth, concerns exist regarding potential drawbacks that may discourage DI recipients from rejoining the workforce, as DI recipients are not allowed to keep their DI benefits if they return to work. In this paper I propose a household search model of labor supply to evaluate the value of Disability Insurance to married couples in the United States, incorporating both search frictions and joint household labor decisions. Structural parameter estimates indicate that overlooking these joint household decisions can lead to misunderstanding of the true value of Disability Insurance.

This study explores the impact of predetermined parental preferences, specifically son preference, on the educational outcomes of their children. Leveraging the unique conditions arising from South Korea’s mid-1980s population control policies and access to ultrasound tests for sex identification, we identify inherent son preference. During this period, parents facing disadvantages for having more than one child could give a subsequent birth to a son due to aids in ultrasound test. Consequently, those with strong son preference revealed their preference toward a son by adopting a behavior known as the son-preferring fertility stopping rule. By defining parents exhibiting this behavior as our treatment group, we estimate that female children born within this context are less likely to achieve college education. Our findings show that female children born into son-preferring families are 66 percentage points less likely to attain a college degree compared to their male counterparts.