Do Daughters Gain from Hypogamy and Sons from Hypergamy? Parental Heterogamy and Children’s Educational Outcomes

Manuel Valdés , University of Vienna
Nadia Steiber, University of Vienna

Prior studies have abundantly documented the positive effect of parents’ absolute educational attainment on their children’s educational outcomes, but research on the impact of the relative dimension of parents’ education remains limited. In this study, we investigate whether women have an educational advantage when raised in hypogamous rather than hypergamous families, whether men experience a similar advantage when raised in hypergamous rather than hypogamous families, and whether these advantages vary with the prevalence of hypogamous families relative to hypergamous ones. To examine these questions, we use data from four waves of the European Union Statistics and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey, yielding a sample of 50,746 individuals residing in 30 European countries and born between 1956 and 1995. Our results show that women benefit substantially from being raised in hypogamous families, a positive effect that has not decreased as hypogamy became more prevalent relative to hypergamy. Men experience a similar advantage when raised in hypergamous families, but this effect has waned with the decline of hypergamy relative to hypogamy. Beyond contributing to research on the influence of parental educational mating pattern on children’s academic outcomes, our findings have relevant implications for the evolution of the gender gap in educational attainment.

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 Presented in Session 57. Flash Session Assortive Mating, Education and Social Class