Educational Assortative Mating and Household Income Inequality

2018/12/12 by Lasse Eika, Magne Mogstad, Basit Zafar · 276 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Assortative mating #Biology #Demographic economics #Distribution (mathematics) #Ecology #Economic inequality #Economics #Geography #Household income #Income distribution #Income, Poverty, and Inequality #Inequality #Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies #Labor market dynamics and wage inequality #Labour economics #Mating

paper · doi:10.1086/702018

published in Journal of Political Economy 127(6), 2795-2835 (University of Chicago Press)

openalex publication_date 2018/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We use data from Denmark, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States to document the degree of educational assortative mating, how it evolves over time, and the extent to which it differs between countries. This descriptive analysis motivates and guides a decomposition analysis in which we quantify the contribution of various factors to the distribution of household income. We find that assortative mating accounts for a nonnegligible part of the cross-sectional inequality in household income in each country. However, changes in assortative mating over time barely move the time trends in household income inequality.

Citations

• Who Marries Whom and Why

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