Union Formation Implications of the Gender Gap Reversal in Education: The End of Hypergamy

Albert Esteve, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED)
Joan Garcia Roman, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED)
Ignacio Permanyer, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED)

The educational expansion that most countries of the world have witnessed in recent decades has been accompanied by a reduction of the gender gap in educational attainment. In this paper we explore the impact of advances in women's education on gender symmetry in union formation and, more specifically, on female educational hypergamy (those unions in which the wife has a lower level of educational attainment than her husband). For that purpose, we use newly integrated IPUMS census micro-data from 103 samples and 38 countries. Results from multilevel linear regression models show that advances in women's education are clearly eroding the pervasiveness of female educational hypergamy. Thus, if current trends in education are to continue, the end of hypergamy is near. The social preference for hypergamy is also declining with the improvements in women’s education.