Gender Implications of New Assortative Mating Patterns: Mating down and Sharing More Equally the Domestic Work?

Clara Cortina , Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Anna Martinez Mendiola, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

The expansion of education and the reversal of the gender gap in education have reshaped assortative mating patterns in Western societies, reducing traditional educational hypergamy while strengthening educational homogamy. However, the impact of this increasing equality in the composition of couples on the relative socioeconomic status of partners is not straightforward. Existing research suggest that educational homogamy has only had a marginal effect on differences in partners' income and occupational positions. In other words, since women generally experience lower returns on education than men, educational homogamy covers the actual socioeconomic hypergamy of women. In this paper, we argue that due to the persistent lower status of women, the uneven division of housework and caregiving responsibilities between men and women remains far from being overcome. Drawing on data from the British Understanding Societies panel data (UKHLS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we explore the relationship between partners’ educational and occupational characteristics and their division of housework and caregiving in these two countries in recent years. We adopt a longitudinal perspective to analyze the dynamic nature of the couples’ arrangement in paid and unpaid work. Consistent with the resources theory, we expect that educational hypogamic couples will continue to exhibit an uneven distribution of tasks at home unless partners reach a more egalitarian occupational position.

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 Presented in Session 86. Partner Selection