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This thesis utilises radical feminism to assess whether it could be argued that marriage in the UK context has moved beyond a sexual definition: beyond consummation. The research looks at alternative relationship forms that have emerged to challenge sexual requirements in relationship law, including civil partnerships, same sex marriage and the marriages and civil partnerships of transsexuals. The thesis argues that through incorporating a nullity clause in matrimonial law on the basis of non-consummation, the law effectively requires sex from its heterosexual married citizens. The thesis demonstrates the patriarchal values underlying the consummation requirement and concludes that the challenges that have emerged have not served to dismantle the requirement. We have not moved beyond marriage or consummation.

Marriage is one of the most private and critical decisions a person makes in their life. This has far reaching effects on an individual, their average quality of life and most importantly on the lives of their children. The development of young children, in terms of emotional, physical, social and learning skills, has a direct effect on their overall development and on the adults they will become. Comprehending the role played by marital unions and the elements that potentially shape children's human capital formation is intriguing and important, to acquire knowledge on where new initiatives are needed and how to design the optimal policies. This thesis consists of three chapters that all empirically investigate issues related to how families function in different environments, in order to understand the nature, causes and consequences of disparities in children's human capital. The first chapter focuses on India, while the second and third chapters are centred on the United States. Although different environments, different histories, varied cultures and different backgrounds, yet the one common theme of this thesis is the way in which families are rational players within households.

This thesis consists of a short introduction and three self-contained chapters. Chapter 1 develops a model of intra-household specialization and human capital formation for couples, taking into account of assortative sorting on income potentials in the marriage market. I assume people are matching on potential wage growth rates which differ across individuals and are realized through actual work experiences. The model is estimated by a simulated minimum distance estimator with PSID data from 1968 to 2011. I find there is strong positive assortative matching on wage growth rates, which helps explain the correlated wage growth residuals of married couples. If matching is switched to random, there will be more variation in household specialization arrangements and higher observed wage growth rates. The estimated elasticity of substitution between market goods and home production is approximately 0.37. Husband's time and wife's time turn out to be complements in the home production function. Chapter 2 studies a marriage market with two-sided information asymmetry in which the gains from marriage are stochastic. Contracts specify divisions of ex-post realized marital surplus. I first study a game in which one side of the matching market offers contracts, and then study a social planner's problem, finding necessary and sufficient conditions for a truthful direct revelation mechanism to achieve matching efficiency. These conditions become more stringent as the number of agents in the matching market increases. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between women's preference towards marriage and her marital outcomes. I propose using the mother's marital status as a proxy for her daughter's ex-ante preference towards marriage. Using 1980 and 2008 U.S. Census data, I estimate the impact of women's preference towards marriage and their educational attainments on their probability of getting married, and with Heckman correction, the impact on their husbands' earnings conditional on being married.

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