Five Decades of Marital Sorting in France and the United States – The Role of Educational Expansion and the Changing Gender Imbalance in Education

Julia Leesch , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Jan Skopek, Trinity College Dublin

Over the past half-century, higher education expansion and changing gender imbalances in education have reshaped the educational composition of the partner market. The influence of these concurrent trends on educational sorting in unions and marriages remains unclear. Using French (1962–2011) and US (1960–2015) census samples, we study the link between (a) educational expansion and (b) trends in the education-gender association and changing marital sorting outcomes (husbands’ and wives’ joint education distribution). Counterfactual decompositions indicate that changes in the education-gender association have contributed to rising hypogamy (wives more educated) and declining hypergamy (wives less educated). Educational expansion is associated with homogamy and heterogamy trends, with fewer unions involving low-educated individuals and more unions with highly educated individuals. This study advances previous research by linking not only the changing gender imbalance in education but also higher education expansion to hypogamy and hypergamy trends.

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 Presented in Session 86. Partner Selection