The Relationships between Gender, Significant Relationship Status and Ph.d.-Holders’ Career Outcomes

Brooke Helppie, University of Michigan
Marta Murray-Close, University of Michigan

In this paper, we use new data from a survey of U.S. job seekers in economics to analyze the relationship between gender, significant relationship status and Ph.D.-holders’ career outcomes. Our innovative data set focuses on new Ph.D. economists because most new academics must move to their new job location. The structure of our data set enables pre-post market comparisons of preferences and CV data on the entire invited subject pool (includes non-respondents) allows us to control for selection bias. We test existing theories of family migration and develop our own model to better explain observed outcomes.