Arif Mamun, who is a graduate student at the department, will be presenting his current work Thursday at the Labor/Development brown bag. The title of the paper is "The White Picket Fence Dream": Effects of Assets on the Choice of Family Union. The abstract for the paper is:

Marriage is perceived as a family status to be chosen after certain economic and relational preconditions are fulfilled - after the couple have achieved the so-called "white picket fence dream". In this paper, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we examine whether there is any direct relationship between the individual's financial and housing assets and his/her transition into cohabitation or marriage. Results from proportional hazard and instrumental variables estimation will be presented in the brown bag seminar.