Francesco Billari
Belinda Aparicio Diaz
Thomas Fent
Alexia Prskawetz

http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol17/3/

doi:10.4054/DemRes.2007.17.3

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Abstract
In this paper we develop an agent-based marriage model based on social interaction. We build an population of interacting agents whose chances of marrying depend on the availability of partners, and whose willingness to marry depends on the share of relevant others in their social network who are already married. We then let the typical aggregate age pattern of marriage emerge from the bottom-up. The results of our simulation show that micro-level hypotheses founded on existing theory and evidence on social interaction can reproduce age-at-marriage patterns with both realistic shape and realistic micro-level dynamics.

Author's affiliation
Francesco Billari
Universita Bocconi, Milano, Italy
Belinda Aparicio Diaz
Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
Thomas Fent
Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
Alexia Prskawetz
Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Keywords
age at marriage, agent-based computational demography, marriage, micro-macro, models, social interaction

Word count (Main text)
4224

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