Educational Homogamy and Assortative Mating Have Not Increased

Abstract

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How Much Does Marital Sorting Contribute to Intergenerational Socioeconomic Persistence?

“…Marital sorting is a persistent phenomenon that attracts the interest of economists and sociologists alike. Educational assortative mating may for example play a role in shaping both cross-sectional income inequality and intergenerational income persistence (Mare 1991;Fernández and Rogerson 2001;Fernández, Guner, and Knowles 2005;Ermisch, Francesconi, and Siedler 2006;Mare 2011;Greenwood et al 2014;Gihleb and Lang 2016;Gonalons-Pons and Schwartz 2017;Eika, Mogstad, and Zafar forthcoming). In addition, if mating patterns lead to sorting on genetically transmitted skills and endowments (Mascie-Taylor 1989;Hugh-Jones et al 2016), assortative mating ultimately also affects the distribution of such endowments in the next generation.…”

“…Raaum et al (2008) highlight this issue and approximate the intergenerational transmission of earnings potential by intergenerational correlations in years of schooling. Gonalons-Pons and Schwartz (2017) andGihleb and Lang (2016) also estimate assortative mating based on potential earnings.…”

A simple solution to the problem of independence of irrelevant alternatives in Choo and Siow marriage market model

“…Contrary to the CS approach, the curve that I derive in Figure 2b) is monotonically increasing. Some theoretical papers argue that assortative matching and homophily can both explain the tendency of individuals to marry members of the opposite sex with similar levels of education (e.g., Gihleb and Lang (2016)). Becker (1973) indicates that marriage gains should be supermodular in education to observe a positive assortative matching in this dimension.…”

Accounting for Urban China's Rising Income Inequality: The Roles of Labor Market, Human Capital, and Marriage Market Factors

“…Although there are many studies on how assortative mating has affected family income inequality in the international literature (e.g., Breen and Andersen 2012;Greenwood et al 2014;Eika et al 2014;Gihleb and Lang 2016), we only find one such study regarding China, which is published in a Chinese journal. Pan et al (2015) conclude that assortative mating has contributed to China's rising income inequality, but their study is plagued by at least two shortcomings.…”