Working Papers
Children, Household Specialization and Relationship Quality
(with Belén Rodríguez Moro) [March 2026]We investigate how having children impacts the quality of couples’ relationships, a proxy for the non-material gains from being in a relationship. Using a novel measure of relationship quality (RQ), we perform a dynamic difference-in-differences estimation around the birth of the first child. We find a sharp and persistent decrease in RQ after birth, of comparable magnitude for mothers and fathers. We attribute this effect to changes in household specialization. Traditional gender-based specialization prevails after birth, regardless of the baseline distribution of tasks within the couple. Leveraging heterogeneous changes in household specialization after birth, we find that couples undergoing larger rearrangements also suffer larger RQ drops.
The Geography of Jobs and Couple Migration
This paper studies how joint geographic constraints induced by partners' occupations influence couples' migration decisions. Using novel measures of geographic concentration and overlap of occupations, I find that highly concentrated occupations significantly limit couples' ability to relocate, although this is mitigated by the geographic overlap of partners' occupations. Additionally, I explore gender differences in occupational choices, showing that women, particularly college educated women, have increasingly selected into more geographically concentrated occupations. A shift-share decomposition reveals that the sharp decline in couple migration over the last few decades is primarily due to changes in migration patterns within different couple types rather than shifts in their composition.
Work in Progress
Returns to Size in Local Marriage Markets
(with Ana Moreno-Maldonado)This paper studies whether there are returns to size in local marriage markets. Using a stylized search model of couple formation, we show that rates of couple formation and dissolution are insufficient to identify returns to market size when meeting technologies differ across locations. This is because higher meeting rates increase not only the frequency of encounters but also the option value of remaining single, raising the minimum match quality individuals are willing to accept to enter a relationship. We show that, after accounting for factors affecting marriage markets through channels other than the meeting technology, a measure of match quality is sufficient to identify returns to size. Guided by the model, we empirically study marriage markets using a novel measure of relationship quality. Adapting methods from the labour economics literature to account for endogenous sorting into cities, we find no evidence of decreasing returns to size. Match quality is weakly increasing in market size, while formation and dissolution rates rise with city size, consistent with increasing returns to scale.