Crime declines where marriage is more prevalent and when individuals enter marriage. To explain this link between crime and household structure, I examine how forming a union transforms a unilateral choice into a jointly negotiated outcome by bringing previously unconstrained actions into the domain of household bargaining, thereby granting partners standing to reshape behavior. I develop a simple household bargaining model that formalizes this process: spousal disapproval creates incentives for behavioral change, and the ability to enforce such change depends on bargaining power within the relationship. The model predicts that behavioral change depends on the interaction between individuals' baseline risk levels and their partners' bargaining power, producing the largest reductions in offending among high-risk individuals with powerful partners. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and proxying partner power with relative earning potential, I find evidence consistent with this prediction, particularly for men's offending. Importantly, the effects are as strong—and, in some specifications, stronger—for cohabitation as for marriage, supporting a bargaining mechanism over selection or identity-based explanations.
While female empowerment is intended to improve welfare, empirical evidence often reveals an inverse U-shaped relationship between women’s outside options and household conflict. I develop a household bargaining model, inspired by Hirschman’s exit–voice framework, that explains this pattern. By modeling bargaining access as contested, I identify a strategic gap between the activation of voice (agency) and the credibility of exit (leverage). Early gains induce women to voice previously suppressed dissatisfaction, but because exit is not yet credible, partners resist voice through strategic escalation, raising conflict. As empowerment progresses and exit becomes credible, partners concede and conflict declines. The framework suggests that rising conflict can be a transitional signal of newly activated agency rather than a mere breakdown of cooperation.