The Marriage Game Revisited: New Insights About Domestic Labor, Divorces and Men’s Expectations About Marriage

Abstract

In the Marriage Game, women decide whether to get married and afterward men decide whether to cooperate in the domestic tasks. Then, if a husband is not cooperative, a wife can divorce or remain married. The sequence of decisions can be formalized as a game in extensive form, in which the strategic interaction between partners turns out evident. A husband may deceive, hoping that the divorce threat is not realistic, and a woman may decide not to get married from the beginning. If players had perfect knowledge about partners’ attitude, then divorce would not exist. Unfortunately, partners’ type is revealed only after the wedding. So, it is assumed that the game is played by different type of players, both men and women, and they interact with incomplete information. The model is solved by calculating all the perfect Bayes–Nash equilibria and it is shown that they depend on a complex interaction between model parameters, as multiple or mixed strategy equilibria can be found same parameters configuration. Comparing equilibria, we argue that the model can describe the marriage evolution that has been experienced by contemporary society. Following the increasing women’s participation in the job market, the number of marriages started to decline, but surprisingly, we are observing its resurgence in the most advanced societies. Our solution to the Marriage Game points to both the active role of autonomous women and the men’s expectations about marriage. As the number of autonomous women increases, men realize that divorce is credible and they change their expectations on women.