Marital Homogamy in the United States: The Influence of Individual and Paternal Education

Abstract

Using information on first marriages from wave one of the National Survey of Families and Households, I form indicators of birth cohort and paternal education for wives, and then construct a four-way cross-classification table including husband's education, wife's education, wife's birth cohort, and wife's paternal education. The resulting table is examined using Quasi-Independence and Crossing Parameter models of association, and fitted parameters describing the extent of educational homogamy and intermarriage implied by this table are presented. Then similar cohort and paternal education indicators are formed for husbands and a second four-way table is constructed, which incorporates the same husband and wife education indicators. Identical analyses are carried out, resulting in a second set of homogamy and intermarriage parameters. Since husband and wife's educations do not change across the two tables and their birth cohorts are similar, it follows that any differences in the two sets of parameters are largely the result of differences in the effects of the two paternal education indicators. I show that the effect of paternal education on homogamy and intermarriage varies by gender, in such a way that wives appear to benefit more from added inputs of paternal education than do husbands. I argue as a result that inherited educational status may play a more important role in determining daughters' eventual marital outcomes.