Educational Assortative Mating and Income Dynamics in Couples: A Longitudinal Dyadic Perspective

• Published date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12470
• Author: Yue Qian
• Date: 01 June 2018

Y Q   University of British Columbia

Educational Assortative Mating and Income

Dynamics in Couples: A Longitudinal Dyadic

Perspective

The question of how educational assorta-

tive mating may transform couples’ lives

and within-family gender inequality has

gained increasing attention. Using 25 waves

(1979–2012) of data from the National Longi-

tudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and longitudinal

multilevel dyad models, this study investigated

how educational assortative mating shapes

income dynamics in couples during the marital

life course. Couples were grouped into three

categories—educational hypergamy (wives less

educated than their husbands), homogamy, and

hypogamy (wives more educated than their hus-

bands). Results show that change in husbands’

income with marital duration is similar across

couples, whereas change in wives’ income

varies by educational assortative mating, with

wives in educational hypogamy exhibiting more

positive change in income during the marital life

course. The nding that husbands’ long-term

economic advancement is less affected than

that of wives by educational assortative mating

underscores the gender-asymmetric nature of

spousal inuence in heterosexual marriages.

In the United States, in light of the recent

gender-gap reversal in educational attainment,

Department of Sociology, Universityof British Columbia,

6303 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver, BC Canada, V6T 1Z1

(yue.qian@ubc.ca).

Key Words: economic well-being,education,family eco-

nomics,gender,marriage,mate selection.

there has been a growing number of couples

in which wives have more education than their

husbands (Y. Qian, 2017b). Meanwhile, the

traditional practice of women marrying up in

education is eroding (Esteve, García-Román,

& Permanyer, 2012). These profound changes

in marriage patterns have spurred increased

attention to the impact of educational assorta-

tive mating on marital and family lives (e.g.,

Esteve et al., 2016; Klesment & Van Bavel,

2017; Schwartz & Han, 2014; Van Bavel

& Klesment, 2017). One area that remains

underdeveloped is how educational assortative

mating may transform the long-term economic

advancement of married men and women. This

study lls this research gap by investigating

how husbands’ and wives’ incomes jointly

evolve during the course of marriage and how

such income dynamics in couples are shaped

by educational assortative mating. Using 25

waves of data from the National Longitudi-

nal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79; https://

www.nlsinfo.org/content/cohorts/nlsy79), this

study examined a cohort in which the trend

toward wives being more educated than their

husbands was becoming more prevalent and

is able to assess both spouses’ income during

almost their entire prime working years (a

feat unable to be accomplished if data from

younger cohorts are used). Hence, this study

uniquely identies types of educational pair-

ings that are most (and least) advantageous

for spouses’ (in particular women’s) long-term

economic standing following marriage. It also

Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (June 2018): 607–621 607

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12470