Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Department of Sociology and Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Demography. 2024 Oct 1;61(5):1293-1307. doi: 10.1215/00703370-11558914.
Recent social and economic trends in the United States, including increasing economic inequality, women's growing educational advantage, and the rise of online dating, have ambiguous implications for patterns of educational homogamy. In this research note, we examine changes in educational assortative mating in the United States over the last eight decades (1940 to 2020) using the U.S. decennial censuses and the American Community Survey, extending and expanding earlier work by Schwartz and Mare. We find that the rise in educational homogamy noted by Schwartz and Mare has not continued. Increases in educational homogamy stalled around 1990 and began reversing in the 2000s. We find a growing tendency for marriages to cross educational boundaries, but a college degree remains the strongest dividing line to intermarriage. A key trend explaining this new pattern is women's increasing tendency to marry men with less education than themselves. If not for this trend, homogamy would have continued increasing until the early 2010s. We also show substantial heterogeneity by race, ethnicity, and nativity and among same- versus different-sex couples.
美国最近的社会和经济趋势，包括经济不平等的加剧、女性受教育程度的提高以及在线约会的兴起，对教育同型婚配模式的变化产生了模糊的影响。在本研究报告中，我们使用美国十年一次的人口普查和美国社区调查，考察了过去八十年（1940 年至 2020 年）美国教育同质婚姻的变化，这一研究延伸并扩展了 Schwartz 和 Mare 的早期研究。我们发现，Schwartz 和 Mare 所指出的教育同型婚配的上升趋势并没有持续下去。教育同型婚配的增加在 1990 年左右停滞不前，并在 21 世纪开始逆转。我们发现，婚姻跨越教育界限的趋势越来越明显，但大学学位仍然是最强烈的通婚障碍。解释这种新模式的一个关键趋势是，女性越来越倾向于与受教育程度低于自己的男性结婚。如果不是因为这一趋势，同型婚配将持续增加，直到 2010 年代初。我们还展示了不同种族、族裔和出生地以及同性和异性伴侣之间的巨大差异。
