ArticleDemography2018
"His" and "Hers": Meeting the Economic Bar to Marriage.
Article in Demography, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Marriage, Wealth, and the Spread of Cohabitation in Canada.The British journal of sociology · 2026Article
- Wealth and Family Formation: Insights from First Cohabitation, Marriage, and Birth in Germany.European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie · 2025Article
- Cohabiting couple's economic organization and marriage patterns across social classes.Journal of marriage and the family · 2024Article
- Patterns of Singlehood, Cohabitation, and Marriage in Early Adulthood in Relation to Well-being in Established Adulthood.Research in human development · 2024Article
- Cohabitation and Marriage Among Same-Sex Couples in the 2019 ACS and CPS: A Research Note.Demography · 2022Article
- Women's Divergent Union Transitions After Marital Dissolution in the United States.Population research and policy review · 2022Article
- Migration, Marriage, and Cohabitation among Hispanic Immigrant Women in the United States.Journal of comparative family studies · 2022Article
- Rising nonmarital first childbearing among college-educated women: Evidence from three national studies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- "I have no idea:" Uncertainty in high school seniors' marital expectations.Population research and policy review · 2021Article
- Changes in expectations to marry and to divorce across the transition to adulthood.Emerging adulthood (Print) · 2021Article
- The Demography of Families: A Review of Patterns and Change.Journal of marriage and the family · 2020Article
- The Effect of Prenatal Stress, Proxied by Marital and Paternity Status, on the Risk of Preterm Birth.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Scholars have suggested that low-income parents avoid marriage because they have not met the so-called economic bar to marriage. The economic bar is multidimensional, referring to a bundle of financial achievements that determine whether couples feel ready to wed. Using the Building Strong Families data set of low-income parents (n = 4,444), we operationalized this qualitative concept into a seven-item index and examined whether couples who met the economic bar by achieving the majority of the items were more likely to marry than couples who did not. Meeting the bar was associated with a two-thirds increase in marriage likelihood. The bar was not positively associated with cohabitation, suggesting that it applies specifically to marriage. When we examined different definitions of the bar based on whether the mother, father, or both parents contributed items, all variants were associated with marriage, even if the bar was based on the mother's economic accomplishments alone. When mothers contributed to the economic bar, they reported significantly higher relationship quality. Our results reinforce the importance of the multidimensional economic bar for marriage entry, highlighting the role of maternal economic contributions in low-income relationships.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.