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Title: College Characteristics and Assortative Mating Patterns among First-Generation College Students
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. King, Michael D.
College Characteristics and Assortative Mating Patterns among First-Generation College Students
Presented: New York NY, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2019
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): Assortative Mating; College Characteristics; College Graduates; Marriage; Socioeconomic Background

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

A college education has well documented relationships with marriage patterns, including whom someone marries. These partnering patterns have important implications for individuals as well as society. High levels of educational homogamy concentrates (dis)advantage in couples, increasingly levels of inequality. While the implications of high levels of educational homogamy are clear, the components influencing who marries whom are less well understood. Among college graduates, the characteristics of the college attended are likely to play a role in structuring potential marriage markets, both during school and after graduation. The way colleges structure marriage markets, though, may also depend on the characteristics of any given student. In this paper, I examine whether and how college characteristics such as student body composition, selectivity, and distance from home are related to the likelihood of educational homogamy among college graduates. Additionally, I test whether these relationships differ between first- and continuing-generation college graduates. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, I find that the opposite-gender composition of a school is negatively related to the likelihood of marrying someone else with a college degree and that this negative relationship is stronger for first-generation students. I also find evidence that graduates of schools with higher acceptance rates and higher proportions of students receiving federal grant aid are more likely to marry someone with less than a bachelor's degree. While college characteristics do influence the likelihood of educational homogamy, they do little to explain observed differences between first- and continuing generation men and women's patterns of assortative mating. By examining social origin, college characteristics, and marriage outcomes together, this paper helps develop a more comprehensive understanding of their i nterrelationships and begins to move us closer to understanding both persistent social inequalities and potential pathways to social mobility.
Bibliography Citation
King, Michael D. "College Characteristics and Assortative Mating Patterns among First-Generation College Students." Presented: New York NY, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2019.