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Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care

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Trends in educational homogamy amongst couples, and its effects

Malcolm Brynin and Marco Fancesconi, University of Essex and Tim Liao, University of Illinois

(Project no. 30028)

The project hitherto has aimed to increase our understanding of the relationship between the marriage and labour markets.  We have produced one paper, based on the British Household Panel Study, in which we explore the impact of each partner's human capital on the other's labour market success, but also the probability that this human capital draws people together in the first place, so that we can look at how closely human capital in partnerships is matched as a predictor of labour market success.  Such factors are closely bound up with homogamy. 

Our objective in the second phase of this project is to analyse the extent of homogamy in British society and homogamy trends, as we believe this has a significant effect on the association between marriage and labour markets. This is an important area of research in its own right, which has also produced conflicting results. Some research suggests that homogamy is increasing, some decreasing. Important arguments as to the nature of modern society depend on settling this empirical issue - in particular, whether marriage and partnership trends are making society more or less open. Further understanding is, however, hampered by the lack of datasets with sufficient observations over time

We have two subsidiary objectives: First, to produce reliable trends in homogamy over time. Here we hope to innovate methodologically by using different indices of homogamy and different indicators of homogamy. Our expectation is that this will produce the definitive account of the extent of and trends in homogamy in the UK. Second, we will look at the effects of homogamy on trends in labour-market outcomes over time, using social class indicators.