Occupational Sex Segregation and Marriage: The Romantic Cost of Gender-Deviant Jobs

Elizabeth McClintock, Stanford University

In this paper I consider the possible mechanisms by which occupation sex segregation might be associated with the chance of marriage. I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) to estimate the chance of marriage over a period of fourteen years as a function of occupational and personal characteristics. I find that both women and men benefit from making gender-typical occupational choices. Additionally, men are penalized from working in female-dominated occupations. In a supplementary analysis I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health 1994-2008 (Add Health) to investigate whether these findings might be attributed to differences in sexual orientation or in personal attractiveness.