Study Claims Hypergamy Exists But Does It Prove It

The evidence suggests that young people adapt to new demographic realities by increasingly forming unions in which wives have the educational advantage, leading to substantial declines in the historical hypergamic pattern. Across a range of different contexts (e.g. United States, France, India, South Korea, Kenya), the norms governing marriage markets have proven flexible enough to accommodate the increasing numbers of highly educated women and, as consequence, the numbers of women marrying down has increased steadily.

It is widely believed that women ... 33 million marriages and 67 million births in England 1837–2021 we show that within this era there was never significant hypergamous marriage by women....

Notably, however, these analyses measure hypergamy among only couples with unequal levels of educational attainment (i.e., heterogamous unions). In other words, they compare prevalence of hypergamy to that of hypogamy, marriages in which wives have higher educational attainment than their husbands.

Using evidence from more than 33 million marriages and 67 million births in England 1837-2021 we show that within this era there was never significant hypergamous marriage by women.

(2024) show that rising educational attainment and the reversal of the gender gap in education are driving forces of declining hypergamy in all three countries, with variations in assortative mating accounting for most of the cross-country differences. Moreover, research focusing on marriage rates also tends to find positive relationships in developed countries between HE and marriage rates, marital stability (Isen & Stevenson, 2010; Geruso & Royer, 2018), and delay in the search of a suitable partner (Gould & Paserman, 2003).

likelihood of marriage for women, and a positive relationship for men. 2 In fact, Mare [1999] finds less assortative mating on education in the period 1940-1980. Using · data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), Rose [2001] finds evidence of a decline · in assortative mating and hypergamy with respect to college completion, and parent’s education

Hypergamy has potentially wide‐ranging economic consequences. It may be a decisive · determinant of the gender‐specific distributions of parenthood and economic wealth, as well · as an important contributor to the gender gap in labor earnings. However, there is virtually no · research on hypergamy in representative populations, the evidence we have is mainly from

True, if you consider education alone, at least in developed countries, hypergamy could be said to be just about obsolete. Up until the mid-20th century, married men typically had more education than their wives.

Meta-analysis of research published from 1965 to 1986 revealed the same sex difference (Feingold, 1992). In Britain, marrying up has decreased significantly since the 1950s. It is becoming less common for women to marry older men, because current socioeconomic dynamics allow women more autonomy. Hypergamy does not necessitate the man being older; rather, it requires him to have higher status.