The Marriage Boom and Home Mortgage Insurance

Jona Schellekens, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The "marriage boom" was a major determinant of the "baby boom" in the United States. One of the best-known explanations for these phenomena is Easterlin's relative cohort model. Using an age-period-cohort model of marriage this paper will try to show that the marriage boom is not a cohort effect but a period effect. Previous explanations have ignored the fact that the marriage boom started immediately after the National Housing Act of 1934 established the Federal Housing Administration to oversee a program of home mortgage insurance against default. This paper shows that a period factor, the Federal Housing Administration and Veteran Affairs shares of total mortgage originations, explains most of the marriage boom.