Racial/Ethnic Variation in the Relationship Between Educational Assortative Mating and Wives' Income Trajectories

Abstract

Prior work has examined the relationship between educational assortative mating and wives' labor market participation but has not assessed how this relationship varies by race/ethnicity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we estimate group-based developmental trajectories to investigate whether the association between educational assortative mating and wives' income trajectories varies by race/ethnicity. The presence, prevalence, and shapes of prototypical long-term income trajectories vary markedly across racial/ethnic groups. Whites are more likely than Blacks and Hispanics to follow income trajectories consistent with a traditional gender division of labor. The association between educational assortative mating is also stronger for Whites than for Blacks and Hispanics. White wives in educationally hypogamous unions make the greatest contribution to the couple's total income, followed by those in homogamous and hypergamous unions. Black and Hispanic wives in hypogamous unions are less likely than their peers in other unions to be secondary earners. These findings underscore the need for studies of the consequences of educational assortative mating to pay closer attention to heterogeneity across and within racial/ethnic groups.