Research project MARCON project
Marital Contracts, Economic Security, and Gender Equality
The MARCON project examines how marital agreements are used in Sweden and how they affect economic security and gender equality, drawing on unique population-wide data on registered marital agreements.
Marital agreements can shape how assets and economic risks are managed within marriage. Photo: Mostphotos.
Marital agreements are legal tools for managing assets – protecting a family business, preserving inherited wealth, or organizing finances between spouses. Yet we know surprisingly little about who uses them, what they contain, and what consequences they have for economic security and gender equality.
The MARCON project takes a broad look at marital agreements: how and why they are used, what assets and arrangements they cover, what role they play within households and families, and how they interact with wealth inequality over the life course.
Drawing on unique population-wide data on all marital agreements registered in Sweden, combined with detailed administrative records, MARCON provides the first large-scale empirical account of this understudied area of family life and asset management.
Why study marital agreements?
Marriage shapes how couples allocate work, accumulate assets, and manage economic risks. Family law provides default rules intended to promote economic security and gender equality between spouses. Couples can, however, modify these arrangements through private contracts.
Marital agreements can be used to protect a family business, preserve inherited or gifted wealth, or determine how assets accumulated before or during marriage are treated. Despite their growing prevalence, relatively little is known about who enters into these agreements, what they contain, and how they affect economic outcomes.
What does MARCON examine?
MARCON addresses this gap by taking a broad view of marital agreements as tools for both family and asset management. The project examines who uses marital agreements, what they cover, and how private contracting affects economic security and gender inequality within marriage and at divorce.
Data and methods
The project draws on a unique dataset comprising all marital agreements registered in Sweden since 1970, linked to population-wide administrative registers. These data contain detailed information on education, occupation, income, assets, and family circumstances, making it possible to follow individuals and couples over time and examine how economic outcomes change around marriage, separation, divorce, and ageing.
The MARCON team brings together researchers in economics and law with expertise in gender inequality, family economics, and public policy.
For questions about the project, please contact the project managers.
The MARCON project includes a number of closely linked sub-projects that examine marital agreements from different perspectives, including divorce, gender inequality, business ownership, and inheritance.
Grey Divorce: Economic and Social Consequences in Later Life
Joint with Lina Aldén, Anne Boschini, Johannes Hagen, Anna Nordén, Jana Schuetz.
Funded by the Kamprad Family Foundation.
Despite the decline in gender inequality in the labour market, differences in pension outcomes remain large and persistent. One potentially important and relatively under-researched explanation is that divorce among older people has increased sharply in recent decades. When couples separate late in life, opportunities to recover financial losses are limited, and women are hit particularly hard since pension rights are not divided upon divorce. In this project, we analyse the economic and social consequences of divorce after the age of 50 – so-called grey divorces – examining how incomes, pensions, and wellbeing change, and what role prenuptial agreements play both in the risk of divorcing and in the financial consequences when separation occurs.
The Private Regulation of Marriage: Prevalence, Content, and Selection into Marital Agreements in Sweden
Joint with Lina Aldén, Anne Boschini, Anna Nordén.
Marriage shapes how couples allocate work, accumulate assets, and insure against risk. Family law provides default rules that redistribute economic risk between spouses, promoting economic security and gender equality. Yet an increasing share of this redistribution is governed by private contract: the use of marital agreements – which allow couples to opt out of default property regimes – has grown across advanced economies. Despite their growing relevance, marital agreements remain largely absent from empirical research. This paper fills this gap using a unique administrative database covering the universe of marital agreements registered in Sweden since 1970, linked to population-wide registers. We document the prevalence and evolution of marital agreements over time, analyse selection into contracting, and examine the factors that drive couples' choices of property regime.
The Role of Marital Agreements in Shaping Intrahousehold Gender Inequality
Joint with Lina Aldén, Anne Boschini, Anna Nordén.
Using a unique dataset of all marital agreements in Sweden spanning more than sixty years, we study how private contracting shapes within-couple gender inequality, tracing its consequences for individual economic outcomes – including income, assets, and labour supply – both during marriage and at divorce.
The Family Firm? On Firm Ownership and Marital Agreements
Joint with Lina Aldén, Anne Boschini, Anna Nordén.
We study how firm ownership intersects with marital contracting, asking whether men and women who own businesses differ systematically in whether and how they protect those assets through marital agreements.
Keeping it within the Family: Assets, Inheritance, and Marital Agreements
Joint with Lina Aldén, Anne Boschini, Anna Nordén.
We examine how the prospect of inheriting family wealth shapes both the decision to write a marital agreement and its content, highlighting how couples use private contracting to protect assets intended to remain within a family line.