Abstract
The purpose of this study is to measure the importance of the background for marital status. The role of unobserved circumstances, including the genes, is of particular interest. Unobserved heterogeneity is, as expected, found to be important for marital status. The results for monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins indicate an important genetic component in marital status. The genetic inheritance of marital status is found to be particularly strong for females.
Acknowledgement
Financial support from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research is gratefully acknowledged (Grant number: 2005-1330). All data, except for the identification of the twin sample, came from Statistics Sweden (SCB). The twin information came from the Swedish Twin Registry (STR). The Swedish Twin Registry is supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council.