Volume 14 - Article 17 | Pages 405–428  

Changes in educational assortative mating in contemporary Spain

By Albert Esteve, Clara Cortina

Abstract

This article analyses patterns and trends in educational assortative mating of the Spanish women born between 1920 and 1969 using data from the 2001 Spanish Census. By means of loglinear models we examine the following issues: i) intensity and changes in educational assortative mating patterns; ii) crossing barriers across educational thresholds and iii) degree of symmetry between male and female patterns.
Results show that education matters in the composition of unions: people tend to marry assortatively according to their education. However this pattern clearly differs across cohorts and between educational groups, being higher for the extreme categories. The most notable trends are 1) the increasing intensity of homogamy among the more educated and 2) the incipient extinction of the traditional female hypergamic pattern.

Author’s Affiliation

• Albert Esteve - Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics (CED), Spain EMAIL
• Clara Cortina - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain EMAIL

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