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Second, I investigate how educational assortative mating shapes husbands and wives income trajectories over the course of marriage. I use multilevel dyad models to analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). Educational assortative mating is captured by three types of educational pairings of spouses: educational hypergamy in which the wife is less educated than the husband, educational homogamy in which both spouses have same levels of education, and educational hypogamy in which the wife is more educated than the husband. I find that change in husbands income with marital duration was similar regardless of educational pairings of spouses, whereas change in wives income varied by educational pairings of spouses such that wives in educational hypogamy exhibited more positive change in income over the marital life course. The findings suggest that it remains important for husbands to bring income into the family no matter what educational levels they have relative to their wives, whereas the rise in women's education and in prevalence of educational hypogamy likely protects women from earning less after marriage.

Lastly, I examine how educational assortative mating shapes patterns of female breadwinning status over the course of marriage. I use group-based trajectory models to analyze data from the NLSY79. I find substantial movement in and out of the primary breadwinner role by wives across marital years and great heterogeneity in trajectories of female breadwinning status across couples. In addition, educational assortative mating plays a role in shaping patterns of female breadwinning status: educationally hypogamous couples are less likely than educationally homogamous or hypergamous couples to follow the traditional trajectory characterized by virtually no chance of achieving a female breadwinning arrangement over the first twenty years of marriage.