Volume 17 - Article 3 | Pages 59-82
The "Wedding-Ring": An agent-based marriage model based on social interaction
| Date received: | 14 Nov 2005 |
| Date published: | 03 Aug 2007 |
| Word count: | 4224 |
| Keywords: | age at marriage, agent-based computational demography, marriage, micro-macro, models, social interaction |
| DOI: | 10.4054/DemRes.2007.17.3 |
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 - Bocconi University, Milan, 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
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