Modern Marriage: Labor Market Sorting, Genetic Output, and Children's Mental Health

This paper asks whether labor market sorting segments the marriage market, increases positive assortative mating, and shapes the transmission of genetics and mental health. I develop a model of marriage in which agents sort in labor markets based on their genetic type, thereby increasing the likelihood that they match with a genetically similar agent. Wages, the dispersion of skill, and moving costs can induce agents to directly change sectors and indirectly change the next generation’s genetic composition.

For additional motivation, I estimate the mental, physical, cognitive, and noncognitive skill composition within and across marriages using couples in the Current Population Survey and skill measures from the O*NET Content Model. I assume that these occupational-specific skill measures serve as a proxy for agents’ genomes. There is more similarity by mental and cognitive skill, both of which enjoy a higher conditional correlation with earnings than physical and noncognitive skill. Finally, I ask whether children’s mental health outcomes are driven, at least in part, by their parents’ assortative mating by skill.

Given data limitations, I employ two separate empirical strategies. First, I consider a development psychological theory that argues autism can result from an assortative match by the ability to systemize. Using the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, I find higher rates of autism in Census tracts with more systemizing strength. Second, I extend the theory to other mental health disorders, including ADHD, anxiety disorders, and mood disorders. Using the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey, I find that parents’ mental and noncognitive skill has a significant and negative relationship with the incidence of ADHD. Parents’ physical skill is negatively associated with the incidence of mental disorders generally and ADHD specifically. Combined, the results of this paper suggests an unexplored research arc: as we play to our comparative advantage, are we also shaping public health?