Crossing Boundaries: “Some College,” Schools, and Educational Assortative Mating

• Author: David McClendon
• Date: 01 August 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12482
• Published date: 01 August 2018

D MC Children At Risk

Crossing Boundaries: “Some College,” Schools, and

Educational Assortative Mating

As more Americans delay marriage and meet

partners online, schools may be less important

for educational assortative mating. At the same

time, social ties formed during college may con-

tinue to shape partner choice later in adult-

hood. This study focuses on young adults with

“some college, no degree” to see what, if any,

marriage-market benet is gained fromexposure

to highly educated social networks in college.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study

of Youth 1997, including newly collected post-

secondary transcripts, the author nds young

adults with “some college” are morelikely than

their less-educated peers to marry a college

graduate, especially if they attended a 4-year

school, but young adults with bachelor’sdegrees

still hold an advantage, even after controlling

for duration of schooling. The results support

the role of schools in shaping opportunities to

meet partners but highlight the value of college

degrees on the marriage market.

In his classic time-gap hypothesis of educational

assortative mating, Mare (1991) posited that

trends in educational homogamy are shaped

by the timing of marriage relative to school

completion. According to this theory, educa-

tional homogamy should be more common

when marriage occurs soon after young adults

graduate because schools act as important

Children At Risk, 2900 Weslayan Dr.,Suite 400, Houston,

TX 77027 (david.m.mcclendon@gmail.com).

Key Words: education, marriage, mate selection, young

adulthood.

marriage markets. As marriage is delayed to

later ages, beyond when most people have

nished schooling, the time-gap hypothesis

anticipates that educational homogamy will

decrease because young adults will choose

partners from more educationally diverse set-

tings. However, although trends in educational

homogamy from 1940 to 1980 support the

time-gap hypothesis, more recent trends do

not: Educational homogamy remains strong

and pervasive even as average ages at rst

marriage for men and women have risen to

29 and 27 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017; Rosen-

feld, 2008; Schwartz, 2013). In fact, today’s

college-educated adults are less likely to cross

educational boundaries when choosing a spouse

than in previous eras (Schwartz & Mare, 2005).

On one hand, these trends could indicate

that partner preferences have become more

important than schools for sorting partners. The

disappearance of middle-income, low-skilled

jobs and the polarization of the labor market

have made a college degree more critical for

earnings and job security, which has increased

the value of a college degree on the marriage

market (Autor & Dorn, 2013; Fernández,

Guner, & Knowles, 2005; Schwartz, 2013).

Online dating has also removed many tra-

ditional social barriers to meeting partners,

potentially allowing preferences to play a more

explicit role in partner selection (Rosenfeld &

Thomas, 2012).

On the other hand, opportunities to meet

may still matter for educational assortative mat-

ing, but the role of schools may have changed.

Mare’s original time-gap hypothesis assumed

that schools functioned as local dating markets

812 Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (August 2018): 812–825

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12482