News Release
For Immediate Release
December 5, 2005
Contact: Christine Schwartz, University of California—Los Angeles, 310-825-1313, schwar@ucla.edu.
Marrying Up or Down Growing Rarer Among Americans, Study Finds
When it comes to education levels, the old adage "opposites attract" has grown increasingly rare for married couples, according to a new article in the journal Demography that examines marriage trends in the United States over the past 60 years.
Between 1940 and the 1970s, U.S. college graduates became much more likely to marry each other rather than choose a mate with less education, report study co-authors Christine Schwartz and Robert Mare of the University of California - Los Angeles . And since the 1970s, there has been a "striking decline in the odds that those with very low levels of education marry up," says Schwartz.
The odds of intermarriage between those people with less than 10 years of education and high school graduates have declined by 38 percent since the 1970s. Intermarriage between college graduates and those with "some college" has also declined since the 1970s, but at a more gradual pace. However, Schwartz and Mare found that intermarriage between high school graduates and those people with "some college" rose.
Since education levels and earnings are closely related, these trends may create a social and economic divide in the United States between those with very low levels of education and the rest of the population, according to Schwartz.
"Because spouses tend to pool their income, these trends may contribute to increasing inequality among families," she says.
The researchers say that one explanation for their findings is the increasing competition for high-earning, highly educated partners.
"As women's earnings have increased, men may have begun to compete for high-earning, highly educated women as women have traditionally competed for high-earning men," notes Schwartz. "Also, as women's earnings have increased, they may have fewer incentives to remain with husbands who have poor or declining earnings."
Finally, the researchers found a sharp increase in the percentage of newlyweds with the same educational backgrounds from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, suggesting that we may see even more pronounced similarity among couples in the future.
For their study, the researchers examined U.S. Census Bureau and Current Population Survey data from 1940 to 2003 for both married couples and newlyweds.
The full article, "Trends in Educational Assortive Marriage from 1940 to 2003," is available at www.prb.org/cpipr/demography/Schwartz.pdf. Or call the Center for Public Information on Population Research at 202-939-5409. The Center, a project of the Population Reference Bureau, is funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.
Demography is the peer-reviewed journal published by the Population Association of America.
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