The Measuring of Assortativeness in Marriage

Pierre-Andre Chiappori, Monica Costa Dias and Costas Meghir ()
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Pierre-Andre Chiappori: Dept. of Economics, Columbia University
Costas Meghir: Cowles Foundation, Yale University, https://economics.yale.edu/people/faculty/costas-meghir

No 2316, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: Measuring the extent to which assortative matching differs between two economies is challenging when the marginal distributions of the characteristic along which sorting takes place (e.g. education) also changes for either or both sexes. Drawing from the statistics literature we define simple conditions that any index has to satisfy to provide a measure of change in sorting that is not distorted by changes in the marginal distributions of the characteristic. While our characterisation of indices of assortativeness is not complete, and hence cannot exclude the possibility of multiple indices providing contradictory results, in an empirical application to US data we find that all indices satisfying our conditions indicate that homogamy by education has increased over time.

Keywords: Sorting; Matching; Marriage Market; Homogamy; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I26 J11 J12 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2021-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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