Marriage Market Sorting in the U.S

Anton Cheremukhin, Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria and Antonella Tutino

No 2023-023, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: We examine shifts in the U.S. marriage market, assessing how online dating, demographic changes, and evolving societal norms influence mate choice and broader sorting trends. Using a targeted search model, we analyze mate selection based on factors such as education, age, race, income, and skill. Intriguingly, despite the rise of online dating, preferences, mate choice, and overall sorting patterns showed negligible change from 2008 to 2021. However, a longer historical view from 1960 to 2020 reveals a trend toward preferences for similarity, particularly concerning income, education, and skills. Our findings refute two out of three potential explanations – reduced search costs and growing spatial segregation – as potential causes of these long-term shifts. In particular, we conclude that people’s capacity to process and evaluate information hasn’t improved despite technological advancements. Among the remaining demographic factors, we identify enhanced workforce participation and college attainment among women as the primary drivers of the U.S. marriage market transformation. Furthermore, we find that the corresponding changes in mate preferences and increased assortativeness by skill and education over this timeframe account for about half of the increased income inequality among households.

Keywords: marriage; sorting; online dating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D83 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2023-09, Revised 2024-09-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger
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Working Paper: Marriage Market Sorting in the U.S (2024)
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DOI: 10.20955/wp.2023.023

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