The changing role of education in the marriage market : évolution du rôle de l'éducation dans le choix du conjoint, homogamie éducationnelle au Canada et aux États-Unis depuis les années 1970

First, what is the overall trend in the relative rate of educational marital homogamy in Canada and the United States over the three decades from the beginning of the 1970s to the turn of the century? [...] In Canada, the change in association, net of changes in the distributions of wives’ and husbands’ education levels, accounts for almost 10 percentage points of the 12-percentage-point increase in educational homogamy from 1971 to 2001. [...] Ultee and Luijkx (1990) find a slight increase in educational homogamy in the United States, and a slight decrease in Canada up to the end of the 1970s, though in both cases the changes are not statistically significant. [...] Aggregation across education levels at the lower end of the educational distribution eliminates heterogeneity in education levels prevalent in earlier historical periods and inflates the homogamy estimates for the beginning of the time series. [...] The five-category grouping reveals the same trend as more detailed groupings and captures the main sources of educational heterogeneity at both the beginning and the end of the period.