Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Demography. 2010 Aug;47(3):735-53. doi: 10.1353/dem.0.0124.
There is considerable disagreement about whether cohabitors are more or less likely to be educationally homogamous than married couples. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I reconcile many of the disparate findings of previous research by conducting a "stock and flow" analysis of assortative cohabitation and marriage. I find that cohabitors are less likely to be educationally homogamous than married couples overall, but these differences are not apparent when cohabiting and marital unions begin. Instead, the results suggest that differences in educational homogamy by union type are driven by selective exits from marriage and cohabitation rather than by differences in partner choice. Marriages that cross educational boundaries are particularly likely to end. The findings suggest that although cohabitors place greater emphasis on egalitarianism than married couples, this does not translate into greater educational homogamy. The findings are also consistent with a large body of research on cohabitation and divorce questioning the effectiveness of cohabitation as a trial marriage.
关于同居者与已婚夫妇相比,其教育同型婚配的可能性更大还是更小,存在相当大的分歧。我使用来自国家青年纵向调查的数据,通过对同居和婚姻的“存量与流量”分析,调和了以往研究中许多不同的发现。我发现,总的来说,同居者比已婚夫妇更不可能在教育上同型婚配,但当同居和婚姻关系开始时,这些差异并不明显。相反,结果表明,不同类型的婚姻和同居在教育同型婚配方面的差异是由婚姻和同居的选择性退出而不是由伴侣选择的差异造成的。跨越教育界限的婚姻尤其可能结束。这些发现表明,尽管同居者比已婚夫妇更强调平等主义,但这并不转化为更大的教育同型婚配。这些发现也与大量关于同居和离婚的研究一致,这些研究质疑同居作为试婚的有效性。