No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Five Decades of Educational Assortative Mating
Abstract
Examines educational attainment as a dimension of assortative mating. Barriers to marriage between persons with unequal amounts of formal schooling increased between the 1930s and the present. These increases may be the result of trends in average educational attainment, age at leaving school, and age at marriage. The degree to which schools affect the selection of marriage partners is dictated by the degree to which leaving school and marriage occur closely together and by the educational attainments of marriage partners. Variation in the average age at leaving school and marriage and in educational attainment induce variation in educational assortative mating. Trends in age at marriage affect both the structure of marriage and inequality within and between generations.
... Such trends may reflect rational behaviour, for example due to complementarities in parenting style and preferences, or competition for economic resources; importantly such matching has implications for intra and intergenerational wealth inequality and warrants investigation. Third, even in the absence of changes in sorting behaviour and stagnating social mobility, such inequality is compounded over time due to intergenerational persistence in education, occupation and earnings (Beck & González-Sancho, 2009;Halvorsen 2023;Lersch and Schunck, 2023;Mare, 1991;Schwartz, 2013;Wagner, 2020). ...
... Research on partnership choice is typically framed in terms of the market-based approach, which highlights the interplay of individual needs, preferences and opportunities (Van Bavel, 2021). Whilst the degree to which one observes partnering within the same social group (endogamy) and partnering with individuals who share similar characteristics (homogamy) varies across countries evidence suggests individuals typically match on characteristics including education and income (Mare, 1991). Such matching may be viewed as efficient if a society's welfare is maximised when such sorting patterns materialise, for example if partnership stability is correlated with certain individual traits. ...
... At the same time, it is acknowledged such institutions, especially the most selective, bring together individuals who share a similar social background and preferences (Bygren and Rosenqvist, 2020;Duta and Iannello, 2018). On the one hand this improves the efficiency of potential matches due to increased homophily, however it also implies the probability of educational homogamy between partners increases with educational attainment (Blossfeld and Timm, 2003;Mare, 1991). The extent to which individuals from differing social backgrounds match is also affected by barriers to accessing higher education which have declined over successive cohorts in GB due to programmes aimed at widening participation and providing financial aid (Callander and Mason, 2017;Dearden et al. 2014). ...
We study partnership sorting by education, the profile of wealth accumulation and the implications for wealth inequality for two cohorts born in 1947-1953 and 1973-1979 using the Wealth and Assets Survey for Great Britain. Our findings suggest individuals positively sort by education relative to random matching. By the time highly educated baby boomer couples reach their mid-late 60s their reported level of median net wealth (£2.49M) is seven times that of low educated couples. Regarding future wealth transfers, we find boomer’s inheritance attitude is influenced by homeownership and inheritances received. Moreover, highly educated couples are more likely to report intending to leave an inheritance and the median level, £0.32M, is three times higher than that reported by low educated boomer couples. We document similar trends in the profile of wealth accumulation reported by Gen X couples and consistent patterns in terms of their expectations regarding future inheritance receipt. We show the disparities in wealth is attributable to the rate at which housing and pension wealth is accumulated. We underline the importance of parental education and housing tenure among both sets of parents, in addition to individuals own education, for understanding the interaction between sorting and wealth accumulation.
... Educational attainment (achieved characteristic) is an important structuring dimension in union formation (Esteve, Garcia, and Permanyer, 2012;Kalmijn, 1998;Mare, 1991;Smits, Ultee, and Lammers, 1998;Blossfeld and Timm, 2003;Schwartz and Mare, 2005;Smits and Park, 2009). According to Kalmijn, (1998), women have traditionally not had, on average, the same education as men, resulting in educational hypergamy (male being more educated than his spouse). ...
... According to Kalmijn, (1998), women have traditionally not had, on average, the same education as men, resulting in educational hypergamy (male being more educated than his spouse). However, this trend is changing as womens' educational attainment increases, resulting in a decrease in the proportion of men marrying women with less education (marrying down educationally) (Mare, 1991;Esteve, Garcia and Permanyer, 2012). The disappearing educational disparity between the two sexes is reflected in the changing patterns of assortative mating, which has recently evolved from hypergamy to homogamy and even hypogamy in an increasing number of countries such as Spain, the US, France, etc. (Schoen and Cheng, 2006;Qian, 1998;Esteve and Cortina, 2006;Esteve and McCaa, 2007). ...
... When Mexican migrants return to marry in their home country, their improved economic status allows them to marry desirable partners who can overlook their low educational attainment, and they tend to marry up educationally (Parrado, 2004;Choi and Mare, 2012). Gender roles egalitarianism in western countries promotes men to compete for women with high educational attainment, just as women traditionally competed for highly educated men (Mare, 1991;Mason and Jensen, 1995). Educational homogamy has become more prevalent among college graduates since 2000 in the USA (Schwartz and Mare, 2005). ...
This research combines three studies analyzing son preference, educational assortative mating patterns, and intergenerational co-residence patterns among Indian immigrant families in the United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain, using IPUMS datasets and United Kingdom labor force data (UKLFS). The results of Study 1 suggest that lower educational attainment is associated with a stronger tendency to favor sons among the Indian immigrant groups studied in the USA, Canada, and Spain. The findings of Study 2 indicate that Indian male immigrants in the USA and Canada tend to marry hypogamously, use their "immigration status" to attract more educated female partners from their home country, while this is not the case in Spain. Finally, the results of Study 3 suggest that in all four countries (USA, Canada, UK and India); age, education level and occupation significantly impact patrilocal residence. The findings provide insight into some of the key patriarchal cultural norms and practices of the Indian population both in India and abroad, and highlight the importance of education and economic autonomy in promoting gender equity and empowerment among immigrant populations.
... Educational attainment (achieved characteristic) is an important structuring dimension in union formation (Esteve, Garcia, and Permanyer, 2012;Kalmijn, 1998;Mare, 1991;Smits, Ultee, and Lammers, 1998;Blossfeld and Timm, 2003;Schwartz and Mare, 2005;Smits and Park, 2009). According to Kalmijn, (1998), women have traditionally not had, on average, the same education as men, resulting in educational hypergamy (male being more educated than his spouse). ...
... According to Kalmijn, (1998), women have traditionally not had, on average, the same education as men, resulting in educational hypergamy (male being more educated than his spouse). However, this trend is changing as womens' educational attainment increases, resulting in a decrease in the proportion of men marrying women with less education (marrying down educationally) (Mare, 1991;Esteve, Garcia and Permanyer, 2012). The disappearing educational disparity between the two sexes is reflected in the changing patterns of assortative mating, which has recently evolved from hypergamy to homogamy and even hypogamy in an increasing number of countries such as Spain, the US, France, etc. (Schoen and Cheng, 2006;Qian, 1998;Esteve and Cortina, 2006;Esteve and McCaa, 2007). ...
... When Mexican migrants return to marry in their home country, their improved economic status allows them to marry desirable partners who can overlook their low educational attainment, and they tend to marry up educationally (Parrado, 2004;Choi and Mare, 2012). Gender roles egalitarianism in western countries promotes men to compete for women with high educational attainment, just as women traditionally competed for highly educated men (Mare, 1991;Mason and Jensen, 1995). Educational homogamy has become more prevalent among college graduates since 2000 in the USA (Schwartz and Mare, 2005). ...
This research combines three studies analyzing son preference, educational assortative mating patterns, and intergenerational co-residence patterns among Indian immigrant families in the United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain, using IPUMS datasets and United Kingdom labor force data (UKLFS). The results of Study 1 suggest that lower educational attainment is associated with a stronger tendency to favor sons among the Indian immigrant groups studied in the USA, Canada, and Spain. The findings of Study 2 indicate that Indian male immigrants in the USA and Canada tend to marry hypogamously, use their "immigration status" to attract more educated female partners from their home country, while this is not the case in Spain. Finally, the results of Study 3 suggest that in all four countries (USA, Canada, UK and India); age, education level and occupation significantly impact patrilocal residence. The findings provide insight into some of the key patriarchal cultural norms and practices of the Indian population both in India and abroad, and highlight the importance of education and economic autonomy in promoting gender equity and empowerment among immigrant populations.
Keywords: Indian immigrants, son preference, educational assortative mating, post-marital co-residency patterns, patrilocal residence, matrilocal residence, cultural norms, gender roles.
... In non-human primates that live in complex and structured social environments, sociodemographic factors have been demonstrated to influence mate pair formation (KEDDY-HECTOR 1992;KLINKOVA et al. 2005; SETCHELL AND JEAN WICKINGS 2006; VAN BELLE et al. 2009;TUNG et al. 2012;FOGEL et al. 2021). As such, when it comes to humans, assortative mating has been the purview not only of biologists, but also social scientists (e.g., (BUSS AND BARNES 1986;MARE 1991;KALMIJN 1998;LUO AND KLOHNEN 2005;BLOSSFELD 2009;TORCHE 2010;SCHWARTZ 2013;GREENWOOD et al. 2014; HENZ AND MILLS 2017; SMIEJA AND STOLARSKI 2018; CHIAPPORI 2020; DE LA MARE AND LEE 2023)). Positive correlations have been reported between human spouses for a diverse array of phenotypes, including morphometric measurements, health outcomes, personality traits, lifestyle factors, age, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, religious affiliation, and language (NAGOSHI et al. 1990;ROBINSON et al. 2017;FIBLA et al. 2022;HORWITZ et al. 2023;YAMAMOTO et al. 2023). ...
... These processes may act individually or in concert. For instance, sociological literature on assortative mating by educational attainment has revealed the influence of both a preference for mate similarity (KALMIJN 1998) and social barriers to marriage across socioeconomic class (TORCHE 2010), and that the strength of assortment by education over time is sensitive to the degree of temporal overlap between the end of schooling and average age at the time of marriage (MARE 1991), suggesting that social milieu is likely also an important factor in structuring mate pair outcomes. ...
... A growing body of research suggests that patterns of assortative mating is not stable over time (e.g., (MARE 1991;SUNDE et al. 2024)). Under an ancestry-similarity model, this could reflect changes in preference over time, potentially to account for decreasing differences between potential mates (as discussed above). ...
Population genetic theory, and the empirical methods built upon it, often assume that individuals pair randomly for reproduction. However, natural populations frequently violate this assumption, which may potentially confound genome-wide association studies, selection scans, and demographic inference. Within several recently admixed human populations, empirical genetic studies have reported a correlation in global ancestry proportion between spouses, referred to as ancestry-assortative mating. Here, we use forward genomic simulations to link correlations in ancestry between mates to the underlying mechanistic mate-choice process. We consider the impacts of two types of mate-choice model, using either ancestry-based preferences or social groups as the basis for mate pairing. We find that multiple mate-choice models can produce the same correlations in ancestry proportion between spouses; however, we also highlight alternative analytic approaches and circumstances in which these models may be distinguished. With this work, we seek to highlight potential pitfalls when interpreting correlations in empirical data as evidence for a particular model of human mating practices, as well as to offer suggestions toward development of new best practices for analysis of human ancestry-assortative mating.
... Second, rising gender equality, especially women's rising employment rates, may have led to converging partner preferences since men started benefiting from having highly educated partners with higher earnings prospects (Mare 1991). Although women continue to benefit from a partner with high education and earnings, their growing economic independence allows them to choose partners based on desirable traits unrelated to economic success (Han 2022;Oppenheimer 1994;Schwartz 2013). ...
... However, by measuring structural opportunities with the marginal distribution, we achieve comparability with the bulk of studies that control for the marginal distributions to study assortative mating (e.g. Mare 1991;Schwartz and Mare 2005). ...
... Leesch and Skopek 2023;Permanyer et al. 2019) as well as the long tradition of log-linear modelling in research on assortative mating (e.g. Kalmijn 1991;Mare 1991;Schwartz and Mare 2005). Second, changes and cross-country differences in the selection into marriages could affect our results. ...
This study examines within-and cross-country trends and differences in marital sorting by education in Europe. Unlike previous research on assortative mating, our study focuses on the outcomes of the partner search process. We investigate how variations in (a) structural opportunities (educational composition of potential partners) and (b) assortative mating (non-random matching by education) have shaped trends and differences in educational sorting outcomes. Using vital statistics data on all marriages contracted from 2000 to 2020 in Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Italy, we decompose trends and differences in educational sorting outcomes into these two components. Within countries, trends in educational homogamy and hypogamy have been stable or increasing while hypergamy has declined. However, the drivers of these trends varied across countries. For example, in Sweden, shifts in assortative mating and structural opportunities led to more marriages between equally educated spouses, while in Italy, the rise in homogamy stems solely from changes in assortative mating. Within each year, homogamy and heterogamy levels varied between countries. Our findings demonstrate that these cross-country differences can be primarily attributed to variations in assortative mating rather than in opportunity structures. This study adds to recent research studying the structural causes of trends in sorting outcomes.
... Apart from changing structural opportunities, what else might explain trends in homogamy and heterogamy? Numerous studies show that the degree of assortative mating (i.e., non-random matching into unions) has changed over time (e.g., Bouchet-Valat, 2014;Mare, 1991;Schwartz & Mare, 2005). Assortative mating refers to the association between the education levels of husbands and wives, and shifts in these patterns can occur, for example, when partner preferences or opportunities to meet potential partner candidates change. ...
... Despite these developments, we believe the odds ratio structure is the most suitable measure of assortative mating for our study. This is not only because it is intuitive and parsimonious, but also because it ensures our results are comparable to the large body of research that has used log-linear models to study odds ratios in marriage tables as a measure of assortative mating (Domański & Przybysz, 2007;Esteve & Cortina, 2006;Hirschl et al., 2024;Katrňák & Manea, 2020;Mare, 1991;Smits et al., 1998;Uchikoshi, 2022). reflecting the gender-education association. ...
Over the past half-century, higher education expansion and changing gender imbalances in education have reshaped the educational composition of the partner market. Nonetheless, the impact of these concurrent trends on educational sorting in unions and marriages remains unclear. Using data from France (1962–2011) and US (1960–2015), we examine how (a) educational expansion and (b) the changing gender-education association contributed to changing sorting outcomes in marital and non-marital different-sex unions. Counterfactual decomposition techniques revealed two main trends. First, the changing gender-education association – apart from educational upgrading – has promoted rising hypogamy (she is more educated than he) and declining hypergamy (he is more educated than she). Second, educational expansion is associated with rising proportions of homogamous, hypogamous, and hypergamous unions involving more educated individuals and declines in these union types with less educated women and men. However, the impact of these changes on overall homogamy and heterogamy trends differs across countries. For example, while the increasing supply of highly educated individuals has promoted hypogamy in France it has offset hypogamy in the United States. Our findings contribute to ongoing debates about the structural effects of educational expansion and the reversing gender imbalance in education on the formation of different-sex unions.
... Yet, theories of mate selection maintain that key channels of offline dating, namely, formal institutions and preexisting social networks, promote in-group partnering through different mechanisms (Kalmijn, 1998). Formal institutions, such as schools, workplaces, and religious venues, though not designed for brokering partnership formation, provide structured opportunities for routine interactions among people who are often similar in various characteristics (Kalmijn & Flap, 2001;Mare, 1991;McClendon et al., 2014). Relationships formed through institutional brokerage, therefore, represent a by-product of the structural opportunities or constraints of meeting afforded by these institutions. ...
... Going beyond prior research, our findings show that compared with online dating, the likelihood of educational heterogamy is not significantly different in offline dating through social ties, but is significantly lower in offline dating through formal institutions and other channels without institutional or personal intermediaries. Thus, compared with online dating, it is institutional settings (e.g., schools, work) and individuals' cultural matching (e.g., similar cultural tastes), rather than third-person intervention in offline dating, that seem to reinforce educational homogamy (Bruze, 2011;Kalmijn, 1994;Mare, 1991;McClendon et al., 2014). ...
Objective
This study examines, for the first time in Canada, the relationship between how different‐sex couples meet and assortative mating on education, race, nativity, and age.
Background
Extending research on how the likelihood of heterogamy differed between offline and online dating, this study disentangles the implications of institutional and third‐person influences from those of online dating for configuring the patterns of heterogamy and gender asymmetry in assortative mating.
Method
Data from a 2018 national survey are analyzed using (multinomial) logit models.
Results
Educational heterogamy and nativity heterogamy are higher, but age heterogamy appears lower, in online than offline dating. Next, specific channels of offline dating—formal institutions, social ties, and other channels—are distinguished and compared with online dating. Online dating tends to entail higher educational and nativity heterogamy (vs. meeting through formal institutions), higher racial and nativity heterogamy but lower age heterogamy (vs. meeting through social ties), and higher educational heterogamy (vs. meeting through other offline channels). Further considering gender asymmetry shows that online dating is associated with higher educational hypergyny (more‐educated man, less‐educated woman) than meeting through other offline channels; higher nativity hypogyny (immigrant man, native‐born woman) than meeting offline (overall, formal institutions, social ties); and lower age hypergyny (older man, younger woman) than meeting offline through social ties.
Conclusion
The findings help untangle the roles of institutional, social, and digital forces in shaping assortative mating. They illustrate the importance of leveraging theoretically informed comparisons to understand how online and offline dating configures assortative mating and its gender‐asymmetric patterns.
... Besides health conditions, education plays a pivotal role in the family formation process in Japan, as with other East Asian societies (Raymo et al. 2015). A widely observed phenomenon in this regard is educational assortative mating (Mare 1991), where individuals with the same level of education are likely to be partnered/married, leading to homogamous union formation (Uchikoshi and Raymo 2021). Meanwhile, arguably influenced by persistent gender norms with masculinity and femininity discourses expecting a male-breadwinner/female-homemaker model, female status hypergamy (i.e., marriage comprising a highly educated man and a less educated woman) is common in Japanese society (Brinton et al. 2021;Yu and Hertog 2018). ...
This article reviews research on education and stratification in contemporary Japan. Particular attention is paid to (1) inequality in educational opportunities and outcomes, including learning experiences, attitudes, behaviors, achievement, and attainment; (2) educational gradients in multidimensional well‐being, such as labor market outcomes, health, family formation, and happiness; and (3) intergenerational inequality and mobility. The evidence suggests that comparable to trends observed worldwide, Japan is a fairly unequal society where socio‐economic backgrounds, education‐related assets/traits, and various forms of rewards are significantly associated. Despite educational proliferation and relevant policies aimed at realizing spatial equality over the decades, the stratified structure based on socio‐demographic factors, such as family backgrounds and gender, persists. These are particularly evident when examining horizontal differentials of educational institutions. Drawing on these findings, this review proposes future research directions, encompassing such keywords as effect heterogeneity and intersectionality, skills and policy relevance, longitudinal approaches, and comparative perspectives. The current paper also underscores the importance of scrutinizing educational, socio‐economic, and cultural contexts to transcend the boundaries of “Japanese Studies” while leveraging Japan as a case of highly‐skilled society to engage a broader audience. The summary and implications presented here call for further longitudinal and comparative studies on education and stratification to establish novel theories in this field.
... The age range for both partners is between 20 and 34 years old. Spouses in this age range are more likely to be in their first marriage, reducing the potential effects of characteristics associated with second or higher-order marriages (Mare, 1991;Kalmijn, 1998;Qian, 1997). However, this is not a consensus in the literature; Blackwell and Lichter (2004) did not find substantive differences in terms of racial assortative mating between higher-order and first marriages. ...
Using data from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios for the years 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2022, this study analyzes the overall patterns of interracial unions in Brazil, considering regional differences and educational distance between partners. The objective is to analyze whether patterns of interracial unions have changed or remained consistent in a context of significant changes in racial relations, including the valorization of Black culture and the implementation of affirmative action policies. The findings indicate a stabilization in these rates during this period (about 30%) with no evidence of an increasing trend. However, important differences emerge when considering specific racial combinations, such as a rise in brown and black homogamy rates. Regional differences highlight the impact of local racial distribution and local specificities of racial classification and racial tolerance. Additionally, the data also provide evidence supporting the status exchange hypothesis, where the darker-skinned partner tends to have a higher educational level. However, this finding may not necessarily indicate an intentional trade but rather reflect how marital preferences operate and has been changing. These results are preliminary and descriptive, intended to generate hypotheses and underscore the need for further research on this topic.
... Apart from changing structural opportunities, what else might explain trends in homogamy and heterogamy? Numerous studies show that the degree of assortative mating (i.e., non-random matching into unions) has changed over time (e.g., Bouchet-Valat, 2014;Mare, 1991;Schwartz & Mare, 2005). Assortative mating refers to the association between the education levels of husbands and wives, and shifts in these patterns can occur, for example, when partner preferences or opportunities to meet potential partner candidates change. ...
Over the past half-century, higher education expansion and changing gender imbalances in education have reshaped the educational composition of the partner market. Nonetheless, the impact of these concurrent trends on educational sorting in unions and marriages remains unclear. Using data from France (1962–2011) and the US (1960–2015), we examined how (a) educational expansion and (b) the changing gender-education association contributed to changing sorting outcomes in marital and non-marital different-sex unions. Counterfactual decomposition techniques revealed two main trends. First, the changing gender-education association – apart from educational upgrading – has promoted rising hypogamy (she is more educated than he) and declining hypergamy (he is more educated than she). Second, educational expansion is associated with rising proportions of homogamous, hypogamous, and hypergamous unions involving more educated individuals and declines in these union types with less educated women and men. However, the impact of these changes on overall homogamy and heterogamy trends differs across countries. For example, while the increasing supply of highly educated individuals has promoted hypogamy in France it has offset hypogamy in the US. Our findings contribute to ongoing debates about the structural effects of educational expansion and the reversing gender imbalance in education on the formation of different-sex unions.
... Marriage involves exchanging valuable resources to maximize the utility of both parties [26]. In China, the acceleration of modernization, extension of primary education, and improvement of educational access for women not only offer the prospect of educational homogamy but also produce social stratification and change, resulting in new types of social inequality [27]. ...
This paper examines the effect of educational assortative mating on overall income mobility in terms of both inter- and intragenerational mobility. In recent years, educational assortative mating has become a trend in China, and this marital sorting pattern not only contributes to marriage stability but is also related to increased income mobility. Educational assortative mating affects the distribution of educational resources among families with diffferent educational qualifications. Families with higher educational qualifications have more educational resources, thus obtaining a more solid income status. Educational assortative mating has the most significant influence on the income mobility of the low-income group, as high-quality educational resources are the key to enabling this group to raise its income status. This paper argues that, in the future, income mobility should be promoted by evenly distributing social education resources and reducing the resource constraints on the upward mobility of the low-income group.
... In this paper we measure hypergamy by the relative status of the bride and groom birth families. Most of the literature on this topic has focused on hypergamy measured as the relative educational or income status of bride and groom themselves [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Since the relative educational levels of women have increased greatly in the last 200 years, this will imply strong female hypergamy in earlier years, and a recent move to women having equal or higher status than their spouses. ...
It is widely believed that women value social status in marital partners more than men, leading to female marital hypergamy (“marrying up”), and more female intergenerational social mobility. Using evidence from more than 33 million marriages and 67 million births in England 1837–2021 we show that within this era there was never significant hypergamous marriage by women. The average status of women’s fathers equaled that of their husbands’ fathers. For marriages 1912–2007 the average social status of female surnames equaled that of male. This was true also for parent surnames of children. Consistent with this, there was no differential tendency in England of men and women to marry by family status. There is also ancillary evidence that physical attraction cannot have been the significant determinant of matching in marriages in any period 1837–2021, based on the very strong correlation observed in underlying social status for marital partners throughout these years.
... There is ample evidence suggesting that individuals choose spouses who are more like themselves across a number of dimensions, such as physical characteristics (for example, Keller et al., 2013;Silventoinen et al., 2003;Speakman et al., 2007), socioeconomic status (for example, Kalmijn, 1994;Sweeny and Cancian, 2004;Xu et al., 2000), ethnicity (Fu, 2001), religion (Kalmijn, 1994) and personality (for example, Hur, 2003;Escorial and Mart´ın-Buro, 2012;Glicksohn and Golan, 2001). Specifically, previous studies have shown that the probability of a match in terms of a spouse's education is significantly greater than the probability of a mismatch (for example, Domingue et al., 2014;Eika et al., 2019;Mare, 1991;Ong, 2016;Qian, 1998). Further, greater educational attainment may contribute not only to women's labor productivity but also that in household activities (Emran et al., 2014). ...
Applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we examine the causal impact of education on marriage outcomes by exploiting the establishment of compulsory education law (CEL) in China. Based on China’s 2005 One Percent Population Sample Survey, we find that while the CEL did not affect the probability of getting married, the increase in female educational attainment led to a significant increase in their husbands’ income and years of schooling, particularly for women living in better-educated provinces. We show that their husbands’ socioeconomic status was not directly improved by the CEL. The effect was likely driven by women’s increased competitiveness in the marriage market, enlarged social circles through work, and increased household bargaining power. Our study highlights how socio-cultural and economic contexts shape the impact of educational reforms, offering valuable insights into non-market returns to education and the dynamics of assortative mating in diverse cultural settings.
... Interestingly, we also found sex differences in the associations with education and household income. For example, both men and women preferred a more Intelligent partner if they themselves were also more educated (Eika et al., 2019;Mare, 1991), but especially educated women wanted an intelligent partner with good earning capacity (Status) and emotional Stability. Women also accepted less Unambitious, Hostile, Filthy, Unattractive, Abusive, Hostile, and Depressed partners if they had more education, while men's preferences were less pronounced for these characteristics. ...
While there is substantial research on what people want in their romantic and sexual partners, much of this work focuses on WEIRD, youthful samples, fails to consider the role of undesirable characteristics (i.e., things people do not want in partners) at all, or in conjunction with desirable characteristics (i.e., things people do want in partners), and may be overly reliant on psychometric approaches to pivotal variables in mating psychology like mate value and sociosexuality. In a nationally representative (online) sample of 2280 people from Czechia (aged between 18 and 50 years old), we examined linear and quadratic age, education, and self-perceived mate value (desirability) effects on the desired levels in mate choice of eight undesirable and seven desirable characteristics in men and women in relation to ostensible metrics of mate value. Self-perceived mate value alone explained little variance (men 1%, women 2%), while all mate value and mating strategy indicators together explained little variance of mate preferences and aversions (men 3%, women 5%). Desirable characteristics were better explained by mate value than undesirable ones. Our results are in line with evolutionary predictions suggesting that women are more demanding. Also, more qualities to offer correlate with more expectations in a partner.
... p. 1376. On tendencies to group tightly with those who are like us in relevant respects, see: on intimate relations, e.g., Schwartz 2013; on education levels,Mare 1991. For an examination of the more complex underlying causes of being with those similar to ourselves than preferences alone in the case of race in the USA, seeWimmer & Lewis 2010. ...
This article defends the significance of our encounters on the grounds of their distinctive contribution to our freedom. The variety and novelty of our encounters, and the spontaneity they allow us in the shaping of our selves, creates opportunities for us to revise our conceptions of the good, to try out new narratives of our lives, and different ways of presenting ourselves. Even when we don’t take up these opportunities, still our encounters provide us with a sense of the openness and possibility of a human life. This role of encounters in a free human life challenges the overemphasis when conceptualising liberal freedom on the unimpeded pursuit of our plans or conceptions of the good: freedom is also about having a life that lies open before us. This defence also makes central not the fleeting contact between strangers on city streets and parks which has hitherto been the focus of political philosophers but, rather, our casual connections and weak ties with others, and in places beyond the city and its public spaces.
... Hypergamy or women "marrying up" socially used also used to be quite common (e.g. Mare 1991). Hypergamy in heterosexual unions has been explained with the relatively larger emphasis women put on their partner's resources and the relatively larger emphasis men put on their partner's fertility, as predicted by sexual strategies theory. ...
Human evolutionary demography is an emerging field blending natural science with social science. This edited volume provides a much-needed, interdisciplinary introduction to the field and highlights cutting-edge research for interested readers and researchers in demography, the evolutionary behavioural sciences, biology, and related disciplines.
By bridging the boundaries between social and biological sciences, the volume stresses the importance of a unified understanding of both in order to grasp past and current demographic patterns. Demographic traits, and traits related to demographic outcomes, including fertility and mortality rates, marriage, parental care, menopause, and cooperative behavior are subject to evolutionary processes. Bringing an understanding of evolution into demography therefore incorporates valuable insights into this field; just as knowledge of demography is key to understanding evolutionary processes. By asking questions about old patterns from a new perspective, the volume—composed of contributions from established and early-career academics—demonstrates that a combination of social science research and evolutionary theory offers holistic understandings and approaches that benefit both fields.
Human Evolutionary Demography introduces an emerging field in an accessible style. It is suitable for graduate courses in demography, as well as upper-level undergraduates. Its range of research is sure to be of interest to academics working on demographic topics (anthropologists, sociologists, demographers), natural scientists working on evolutionary processes, and disciplines which cross-cut natural and social science, such as evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, cultural evolution, and evolutionary medicine. As an accessible introduction, it should interest readers whether or not they are currently familiar with human evolutionary demography.
... Nevertheless, factors affecting dissolution also depend on the traits of each spouse. In general, people have a tendency to choose partners with a similar social background according to sociologists such as Hendrickx et al. (1991); Kalmijn (1998) and Mare (1991) who have studied assortative mating with respect to social backgrounds such as education, class, religion, ethnicity, age, among other factors. 5 Such a matching process of likes, known as positive assortative mating, increases complementarities in household production and may boost inter-generational persistence of wealth, income, education and other economic outcomes. ...
The strong negative correlation between divorce and a wide range of outcomes in terms of well-being, health, education and labour market performance has been well documented in the literature. Economic conditions have been found to affect marital stability. Shared gains from marriage also depend on spouses’ characteristics such as age, education, ethnicity and religious beliefs. This paper examines the relationship between these spousal characteristics and the probability of dissolution while taking into account business cycle fluctuations. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 1968–2011 for the United States and employing a duration modelling strategy, findings reveal that differences in educational attainment and ethnicity between spouses increase the hazard of marital dissolution. However similarity in religious beliefs and ethnicity reduce the risk of divorce. A period of economic growth improves marital stability. However, ethnic differences are a significant predictor of marital division, even in times of economic prosperity.
... Bien qu'elle soit au coeur de nombreuses controverses entre l'économie, la démographie et la sociologie (notamment s'agissant de l'homogamie des couples en matière d'éducation, voir par exemple Mare, 1991, Schwartz et Mare, 2005, Gihleb et Lang, 2020, cette distinction est à l'origine d'un renouvellement profond de l'approche sociologique de l'homogamie, qui s'intéresse à la dynamique des choix maritaux au cours du cycle de vie (Blossfeld, 2009). ...
L’homogamie économique est un phénomène largement documenté, qui est souvent interprété comme résultant d’une préférence pour l’entre-soi. Pourtant, les caractéristiques des conjoints dans un ménage conditionnent non seulement leur satisfaction à être ensemble mais également leurs décisions de division du travail. Nous présentons dans cet article une approche qui englobe à la fois le processus de formation des couples, le partage des ressources au sein du ménage, et la complémentarité des conjoints dans les activités du couple. Appliquée à l’Allemagne entre 2013 et 2019, cette approche montre que l’homogamie salariale est concentrée dans le haut de la distribution, que l’éducation a un poids très important dans les complémentarités des conjoints, et que le salaire et l’éducation jouent un rôle similaire dans les modalités de partage du revenu du ménage. Classification JEL : C78, D83, J12, J22.
... El análisis del emparejamiento selectivo en la formación de uniones es relevante porque la homogamia se constituye como una medida del grado de rigidez social (Mare, 1991;Raymo y Xie, 2000) y juega un papel importante en la reproducción de la desigualdad social y de género (Bouchet-Valat y Dutreuilh, 2015;Schwartz, 2010a;Schwartz y Mare, 2005;Torrado, 2003). La homogamia, abordada desde múltiples perspectivas teóricas, es una concreción del concepto weberiano de cierre social; el estudio del emparejamiento selectivo es una forma de entender los mecanismos de cierre y apertura de los grupos sociales (Kalmijn, 1998) y la reproducción de la jerarquía social (Bourdieu, 2004), de aproximarse a las estrategias conyugales como forma de reproducción social (Bourdieu, 2013) y poner a prueba la vigencia de modelos como el de especialización (Becker, 1973) y búsqueda matrimonial (Oppenheimer, 1988) en el proceso de formación de uniones. ...
El objetivo del artículo es presentar una revisión de la investigación realizada en América Latina sobre el emparejamiento selectivo por edad y por educación en las últimas dos décadas. Se identificó que existe una amplia literatura respecto al emparejamiento selectivo por educación en la región, mientras que aún es necesario explorar más elementos acerca del emparejamiento por edad. La cobertura temática de la investigación producida en torno al emparejamiento selectivo por educación es amplia, particularmente en la última década, y constituye una aportación significativa en la discusión global sobre el tema. Por otra parte, la revisión del análisis del emparejamiento selectivo por edad devela que aún quedan muchas líneas de investigación por explorar en esta temática, particularmente en un contexto como el latinoamericano, marcado por la desigualdad económica y de género, la incertidumbre en el mercado laboral, la heterogeneidad en el estadio de la transición demográfica, entre otras características.
... Such examples of assortative mating may also arise due to competition. The competition hypothesis posits that individuals seek the highest possible amount of a given trait (Mare, 1991). If most individuals favour a highly educated partner, educational homogamy can result from the fact that those with the highest education themselves are more likely to be favoured by other highly educated individuals. ...
Despite increasing diversity within many societies, ethnically endogamous unions remain common. In contexts where one ethnic minority has lived alongside the majority for centuries, understanding who partners with whom is central to understanding how ethnic boundaries are maintained or dissolved. This study examines the role of own and parental ethnolinguistic affiliation for the first partner choice in Finland. We provide a unique test of the relevance of ethnic endogamy across two generations, in a context where both groups are native, but one (Finnish speakers) overwhelmingly outnumbers the other (Swedish speakers). Using register data on the total population, we examine how a person’s ethnolinguistic affiliation and background affect the choice of the first cohabiting partner in terms of the partner’s ethnolinguistic affiliation and background. We apply discrete-time competing risk models for men and women born 1970–1983. Results indicate that Swedish-registered individuals with two Swedish-registered parents are, by far, the most likely to partner with another Swedish-registered person with endogamous background. Partnering with a Swedish-registered person with exogamous background is most likely among individuals who themselves come from mixed unions. Patterns are remarkably consistent across gender, and adjustments for education and residential area only marginally alter the results.
Purpose
Assortative selection exists as a theoretically and practically influential construct even though its potential effects remain hidden within the marketing discipline. This paper initially aims to introduce the explanatory and predictive power of assortative selection processes to marketing theory and practice. The second purpose was to conceptually develop and empirically refine an emergent assortative selection scale inside consumer-to-consumer (C2C) exchanges. The final purpose was to create a nomological framework through which the effects of assortative selection processes on three key marketing outcomes could be investigated, and the theoretical and managerial value of the newly validated construct might be justified.
Design/methodology/approach
A scale was developed that captures seven dimensions that purportedly comprise the assortative selection construct. Three studies were conducted to test three research propositions.
Findings
Study propositions were confirmed. Assortative selection was revealed to exist as a theoretically and empirically valid marketing construct. Assortative selection processes were also shown to influence three relevant, practical and desirable marketing outcomes inside C2C exchanges.
Research limitations/implications
Like most theoretical efforts, this research features some limitations. One shortfall derives from an absence of real-world examples. A second limitation is that only three marketing outcomes were tested inside the nomological framework, while no antecedents to assortative selection processes were integrated into the model. Other attractive managerial outcomes that may be inspired or negated as consumer-buyers evaluate consumer-sellers through assortative selection processes are absent. Potential antecedents to the onset of assortative selection processes inside C2C exchanges should also be integrated into future models.
Practical implications
Consumer-sellers marketing themselves and their products inside C2C exchanges presumably aspire, as near-default conditions, to establish new or build closer relationships with consumer-buyers. The insights generated through an analysis of consumer-buyers’ applications of assortative selection processes revealed opportunities for consumer-sellers to leverage assortative selection to secure relational gains inside C2C exchanges. Specifically, opportunities were revealed for consumers-sellers to position their malleable interpersonal values more successfully and, by extension, their products to actual or prospective consumer-buyers.
Originality/value
This paper introduces a novel concept to the marketing literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to theoretically and empirically validate the existence and practical utility that could accrue to consumer-sellers if they managed associative selection processes inside an expanding marketing domain, specifically C2C exchanges. This study is likewise the first to develop practical insights regarding how consumer-sellers might strategically respond to the effects that consumer-buyers’ assortative selection-based evaluations impose as they decide whether and from whom to purchase.
Objective
This study compares the sterilization behavior of couples with varying joint education levels and union types.
Background
A couple's joint education levels affect the resources available to them and the power dynamics within the relationship; they also help determine which spouse takes primary responsibility for the couple's fertility work. However, few studies have examined how couples' sterilization behavior differs according to their joint education levels and union type.
Methods
Using data from the 2006–2019 National Survey of Family Growth, this study estimated multinomial logistic regression models to predict the relative risk of relying on female sterilization, male sterilization, or reversible contraception for couples with varying joint education levels and union type.
Results
Married and cohabiting couples with higher joint levels of education were less likely than their lesser‐educated counterparts to rely on female sterilization. Married couples with higher joint levels of education were more likely than their lesser‐educated counterparts to rely on male sterilization. However, for cohabiting couples, disparities in reliance on male sterilization differed little according to their joint levels of education.
Conclusion
Future studies should consider how male and female partners' education interact to affect their sterilization behavior. When they do, they should consider their relative and absolute levels of education.
Population genetic theory, and the empirical methods built upon it, often assume that individuals pair randomly for reproduction. However, natural populations frequently violate this assumption, which may potentially confound genome-wide association studies, selection scans, and demographic inference. Within several recently admixed human populations, empirical genetic studies have reported a correlation in global ancestry proportion between spouses, referred to as ancestry-assortative mating. Here, we use forward genomic simulations to link correlations in global ancestry proportion between mates to the underlying mechanistic mate-choice process. We consider the impacts of two types of mate-choice model, using either ancestry-based preferences or social groups as the basis for mate pairing. We find that multiple mate-choice models can produce the same correlations in global ancestry proportion between spouses; however, we also highlight alternative analytic approaches and circumstances in which these models may be distinguished. With this work, we seek to highlight potential pitfalls when interpreting correlations in empirical data as evidence for a particular model of human mating practices, as well as to offer suggestions toward development of new best practices for analysis of human ancestry-assortative mating.
This study examines the associations between educational sorting—the intra-couple difference in education—and subjective well-being of heterosexual partners in Europe, independent of each partner’s education status. It extends the literature by exploring whether and how these associations vary across societies and normative climates. A sample of 180,733 respondents in marriage or cohabitation from 29 countries was selected from Rounds 1–10 (2002–2020) of the European Social Survey and analyzed using the Diagonal Mobility Models. Pooled analyses show that net of status effects, hypergamy (women partnering with more educated men) was associated with lower well-being for both genders, and men were more satisfied with life in hypogamous relationships (partnering with more educated women). These patterns varied across societies, illustrated, for instance, by a hypergamy advantage among men in Southern Europe and women in the Baltic states. Notably, women’s well-being disadvantage in hypergamy was exacerbated in contexts where such partnerships were less normative. These findings provide unique insights into the diverse well-being outcomes of assortative mating between genders and across societies, shaped, in part, by societal norms.
Recent decades have seen major changes in the educational profiles of the populations of Western industrialised countries, notably a sharp rise in educational attainment and a reversal of the gender gap in education. These trends are likely to have affected patterns of educational assortative mating and its consequences. In this editorial, we first review the empirical evidence on educational assortative mating patterns over the last two decades. Specifically, we examine whether educational homogamy has increased among the highly educated, whether women are now less likely to marry upward across cohorts, and whether the rates of relative educational homogamy in populations have increased. We also examine the factors that explain trends and cross-country differences in educational homogamy. Second, we review the consequences of educational homogamy for several important social outcomes, in particular partnership stability and union dissolution, fertility, and children’s educational attainment. Is educational homogamy increasingly affecting these outcomes, and if so, in what ways and why? Third, we identify research gaps regarding educational assortative mating and its consequences. The six empirical studies in this special issue attempt to fill some of these gaps. We briefly outline these studies and their main findings and point to implications for future research. * This editorial has been peer reviewed.
In this study, we explore how educational differences in demographic behavior – in particular, mating patterns and fertility – mediate the intergenerational reproduction of educational inequality in twelve European countries. Although this research interest itself is not new, we contribute to this debate by adopting a prospective approach and scaling it to include multiple countries and cohorts. To this end, we leverage a series of complementary datasets and the inferential method developed by Song and Mare (2015) and advanced by Skopek and Leopold (2020) to estimate the components of a stylized educational reproduction model. We then employ a simple decomposition analysis to quantify the contributions of different pathways to prospective educational reproduction rates across educational backgrounds and explore the differences across cohorts and countries. We report several findings. Most notably, (1) the intergenerational reproduction of educational inequality persists in all twelve countries and is barely offset by small (and declining) negative educational gradients in fertility, (2) educational differences in selection into partnership are small and do not account for much inequality, and (3) the role of assortative mating, where present, is ambiguous because it both reinforces inequality via its effects on resources within the family and offsets it via its effects on fertility. * This article belongs to a special issue on “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”.
We examine 1.5- and second-generation immigrants’ union formation patterns in Denmark and how they relate to the cultural proximity between their countries of origin and Denmark as indicated by religion, values, and language. Drawing on administrative register data on 71,122 1.5- and second-generation immigrants from 120 different countries of origin, we use multilevel discrete-time event history analysis to examine the nexus between cultural proximity and union formation patterns. These models rigorously control for time-varying individual factors and changes in opportunity structures in local partner markets. Our results suggest that religion strongly relates to the 1.5- and second-generation immigrants’ union formation patterns. At the same time, this is not the case for the other cultural factors when we account for religion. Specifically, our results suggest that 1.5- and second-generation immigrants from non-Christian and especially from Muslim countries are less likely to form interethnic unions with natives and more likely to form intraethnic unions with same-country immigrants than their Protestant-background counterparts. Moreover, these patterns are most pronounced for women. Overall, we conclude that religion remains a strong predictor of interethnic union formation with natives among 1.5- and second-generation immigrants in Denmark and discuss the implications of this finding.
Studies examining the consequences of intergenerational income mobility for individuals often face challenges due to multicollinearity between origin, destination, and a mobility construct based on the origin-destination difference. This article introduces a novel conceptualization of mobility, termed “reachability mobility,” which is based on the “easiness” of achieving a particular origin-destination combination within a population. This approach contrasts with the traditional lattice-based conceptualization. Furthermore, this study proposes using copulas—a statistical tool that captures the dependence structure between incomes of two generations while remaining insensitive to their marginal distributions—to measure reachability mobility. When combined with a standard measure of mobility direction, this approach allows scholars to simultaneously estimate the effects of origin, destination, and mobility along with numerous other methodological advantages. An illustrative example is provided that investigates the effect of intergenerational income mobility on mental health status using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979.
Emerging evidence has shown that assortative mating (AM) is a key factor that shapes the landscape of complex human traits. It can increase the overall prevalence of disorders, influence occurrences of comorbidities, and bias estimation of genetic architectures. However, there is lack of large-scale studies to examine the cultural differences and the generational trends of AM for psychiatric disorders. Here, using national registry datasets, we conduct the largest scale of AM analyses on nine psychiatric disorders, with up to 1.4 million mated cases and 6 million matched controls. We performed meta-analyses on AM estimates from Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden, to examine the potential impact of cultural differences. Generational changes for people born after 1930s were investigated as well. We found that AM of psychiatric disorders are consistent across nations and persistent over generations, with a small proportion of disorders showing generational changes of AM. Our results provide additional insight into the mechanisms of AM across psychiatric disorders and have evident implications on the estimation of the genetic architectures of psychiatric disorders.
Recent social and economic trends in the United States, including increasing economic inequality, women's growing educational advantage, and the rise of online dating, have ambiguous implications for patterns of educational homogamy. In this research note, we examine changes in educational assortative mating in the United States over the last eight decades (1940 to 2020) using the U.S. decennial censuses and the American Community Survey, extending and expanding earlier work by Schwartz and Mare. We find that the rise in educational homogamy noted by Schwartz and Mare has not continued. Increases in educational homogamy stalled around 1990 and began reversing in the 2000s. We find a growing tendency for marriages to cross educational boundaries, but a college degree remains the strongest dividing line to intermarriage. A key trend explaining this new pattern is women's increasing tendency to marry men with less education than themselves. If not for this trend, homogamy would have continued increasing until the early 2010s. We also show substantial heterogeneity by race, ethnicity, and nativity and among same- versus different-sex couples.
To investigate the influence of spouses of business leaders on corporate decision-making behavior, we use data from 2003 to 2019 from Chinese listed family-controlled companies to examine the impact of entrepreneurs’ wives participating in corporate management on the risk-taking of family businesses. We found that entrepreneurs’ wives participating in company management significantly reduce the risk taking of family businesses, particularly when the wife is a shareholder in the company. Additionally, the wife’s age, level of education, and professional experience also affect her attitude and behavior toward participating in company management. When the wife is older and has a higher degree of education, the risk taking of the enterprise decreases. However, the wife’s rich professional experience can mitigate female conservatism and increase the company’s risk taking. Our research has implications for understanding gender differences in the context of the extension of marital power of Chinese entrepreneurs’ wives from the family to corporate decision-making and risk preferences. This helps to deepen our understanding of the role and status of women in China’s family business management.
In this chapter, we consider two broad empirical questions—one about the process of assortative mating and the other about its consequences.
As discussed earlier, changing attitudes and expectations regarding gender are seen as one of the most salient factors for understanding recent trends in educational assortative mating and their consequences. In this respect, the Japanese case provides an important opportunity to better understand how trends in educational assortative mating in societies characterized by persistent gender inequality may or may not resemble those documented in more gender-egalitarian societies.
In this chapter, we summarize and evaluate the results of our empirical analyses.
In this chapter, we discuss two important conceptual issues regarding assortative mating, one about why marriages tend to be homogamous and the other about why patterns of assortative mating may change.
With the rise of dating apps, people have access to a vast pool of potential partners at their fingertips. The present study examined how various factors would predict an individual's dating decisions in a dating app–analog study. Participants (N = 269) first completed some trait measures and then a mock-dating task in which they judged the attractiveness of a series of targets and then decided whether to match with the target or not. Their memories for the targets were tested on the second day. People who were more (vs. less) short-term oriented were more likely to match with short-term-oriented targets. Moral disgust and sexual disgust negatively predicted the matching with short-term oriented targets. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find support that people with higher (vs. lower) pathogen disgust sensitivity would selectively match with more attractive targets. Exploratory analyses showed that people who were more (vs. less) short-term oriented, more (vs. less) sexually attractive, or had higher (v. lower) mate value, were more likely to match with targets they considered as attractive. Finally, people have better memories of the faces they chose to match than to not match. Implications to mating research and limitations were discussed.
Using data from the 2011 baseline China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this study employs a simulation model developed by Mare and Maralani to investigate the intergenerational effects of changes in the distribution of women's education on the educational distribution of their offspring's generation in China. Different from the conventional retrospective studies of intergenerational mobility that have focused on associations between parents’ and children's socioeconomic attainment, the prospective approach adopted in this study examines the relative importance of both the demographic pathways, namely assortative mating and fertility differentials, and the social mobility pathway to the intergenerational transmission processes in a changing socioeconomic and policy context of China. First, I found a positive intergenerational effect across all three cohorts of women born between 1925 and 1965: an increase in women's education led to an improvement in their daughters’ educational attainment. Second, the two demographic pathways, marriage and fertility, and intergenerational transmission jointly affected the educational attainment of the next generation in a complex way. While assortative mating strengthened the intergenerational effects, educational differentials in fertility dampened the intergenerational effects, since improvement in women's education increased their chances of marrying better-educated husbands but reduced their fertility levels. Third, the intergenerational effects and the respective effects of two demographic pathways became smaller across cohorts, which could be attributed jointly to educational expansion at the national level and changing family planning policies experienced by different cohorts of women and their offspring. Fourth, rural/urban comparison further demonstrated the existing educational inequality in contemporary China.
Assortative mating – the non-random mating of individuals with similar traits – is known to increase trait-specific genetic variance and genetic similarity between relatives. However, empirical evidence is limited for many traits, and the implications hinge on whether assortative mating has started recently or many generations ago. Here we show theoretically and empirically that genetic similarity between relatives can provide evidence on the presence and history of assortative mating. First, we employed path analysis to understand how assortative mating affects genetic similarity between family members across generations, finding that similarity between distant relatives is more affected than close relatives. Next, we correlated polygenic indices of 47,135 co-parents from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) and found genetic evidence of assortative mating in nine out of sixteen examined traits. The same traits showed elevated similarity between relatives, especially distant relatives. Six of the nine traits, including educational attainment, showed greater genetic variance among offspring, which is inconsistent with stable assortative mating over many generations. These results suggest an ongoing increase in familial similarity for these traits. The implications of this research extend to genetic methodology and the understanding of social and economic disparities.
With the increasing education of women in developing countries, educational assortative mating has become a significant aspect in the marriage market, with educational assortative mating patterns likely to be dependent on marriage timing. Using pooled data from three recent waves of the Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, the paper investigates the effect of marriage timing on educational assortative mating patterns in Cameroon. To achieve the objective, the study employed the Cox proportional hazard model and a control function version of multinomial Probit. Results show that delaying marriage is expected to decrease the likelihood of women engaging in low educationally homogamous marriages while increasing the probability of women entering high educationally homogamous and hypogamous marriages. Findings further depicted that over the period 2004–2018, the likelihood of women engaging in low educationally homogamous marriages decreased meanwhile the likelihood of women considering high educationally homogamous marriages and hypogamous marriages increased. The implications of these findings are in tandem with the wisdom that, programs encouraging the girl child to delay early marriages and stay longer in school can help women engage in high educationally homogamous marriages, empower women and thus improves their socioeconomic status.
With the rise of dating apps, people have access to a vast pool of potential partners at their fingertips. The present study examined how various factors would predict an individual's dating decisions in a dating app–analog study. Participants (N = 269) first completed some trait measures and then a mock-dating task in which they judged the attractiveness of a series of targets and then decided whether to match with the target or not. Their memories for the targets were tested on the second day. People who were more (vs. less) short-term oriented were more likely to match with short-term-oriented targets. Moral disgust and sexual disgust negatively predicted the matching with short-term oriented targets. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find support that people with higher (vs. lower) pathogen disgust sensitivity would selectively match with more attractive targets. Exploratory analyses showed that people who were more (vs. less) short-term oriented, more (vs. less) sexually attractive, or had higher (v. lower) mate value, were more likely to match with targets they considered as attractive. Finally, people have better memories of the faces they chose to match than to not match. Implications to mating research and limitations were discussed.
Do recent declines in first marriage rates signal that an increasing proportion of women will remain single their entire lives, or merely that they are postponing marriage to older ages? Our forecasts for cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s suggest that marriage will remain nearly universal for American women—close to 90 percent of women are predicted to marry. However, separate forecasts by educational attainment reveal a new socioeconomic pattern of first marriage: Whereas in the past, women with more education were less likely to marry, recent college graduates are now forecast to marry at higher levels despite their later entry into first marriage. This educational crossover, which occurs for both black women and white women in recent cohorts, suggests that marriage is increasingly becoming a province of the most educated, a trend that may become a new source of inequality for future generations. Forecasts presented here use data from the 1995 Current Population Survey and compare estimates from the Hemes model with those from the Coale-McNeil model.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.