Same-Sex Relationship Escalation with Uncertain Marriage Legality: Theory and Empirical Implications

摘要

We develop a strategic model of same-sex dating, cohabitation, and potential marriage with location-specific marriage legality. With an initial illegal location, couples bargain over a relationship path that internalizes the probability of future legalization and potential migration-for-marriage. Our model generates testable, empirical implications on relationship hazard rates, migration, and utility due to changes in migration costs and legalization probabilities. Specifically, we show that decreased migration costs or increased legalization probabilities will increase relationship hazard rates (dissolution) for both daters and cohabitators. These changes will also decrease utility for an identifiable segment of the relationship quality distribution.