A dynamic model of the marriage market—Part 2: Simulation of marital states and application to empirical data

• Divorce, widowing and remarriage added to the matching algorithm of Part 1.
• Gender-symmetric numerical scheme.
• Self-consistent set of marital state age distributions obtained.
• Model produces good fit to Zambian data.
• Dynamic marriage function illustrated in simulations of elevated mortality.

A dynamic, two-sex, age-structured marriage model is presented. Part 1 focused on first marriage only and described a marriage market matching algorithm. In Part 2 the model is extended to include divorce, widowing, and remarriage. The model produces a self-consistent set of marital states distributed by age and sex in a stable population by means of a gender-symmetric numerical method. The model is compared with empirical data for the case of Zambia. Furthermore, a dynamic marriage function for a changing population is demonstrated in simulations of three hypothetical scenarios of elevated mortality in young to middle adulthood. The marriage model has its primary application to simulation of HIV-AIDS epidemics in African countries.