Educational Homogamy, Positive Assortative Mating and Income Inequality in South Africa: An Unconditional Quantile Regression Analysis

Abstract

Apart from being the first attempt at investigating the impact of education-based homogamy and positive assortative mating on income inequality in a developing country context with very high levels of inequality and low education levels, this study pioneers in analysing the nonlinear relationship between mating patterns and income inequality. Further, the study contributes by the use of unconditional quantile regression and other distributional measures facilitated by the recentered influence function (RIF) method. The study finds convincing evidence of the existence of homogamy and positive assortative mating in South Africa. However, the strength of the relationship is seen to be weakening among younger cohorts as compared with older cohorts. The study further finds a non-linear U-shaped relationship between income inequality and the level of education-based homogamy, while a negative relationship is revealed between positive assortative mating and income inequality.