So say Rania Gihleb and Kevin Lang.
Some economists have argued that assortative mating between men and women has increased over the last several decades, thereby contributing to increased family income inequality. Sociologists have argued that educational homogamy has increased. We clarify the relation between the two and, using both the Current Population Surveys and the decennial Censuses/American Community Survey, show that neither is correct. The former is based on the use of inappropriate statistical techniques. Both are sensitive to how educational categories are chosen. We also find no evidence that the correlation between spouses’ potential earnings has changed dramatically.
I have not read the paper. It certainly would throw cold water on one of the four forces.
They have a somewhat narrow definition of assortative mating in terms of *rank order only*, rather than say the absolute level of one salary marrying the absolute level of another salary. I don’t think their paper forces you (or I) to revise any views.
But middle class men started going to university well before middle-class women, so for much of the 20th century, a marriage between a man with a degree and a woman without one looks like non-assortive mating even if they came from the same social class. The same would be true of income as a measure, since women under-earned with respect to their social class for a very long time. It seems to me that a better measure would be to use the education and income of the bride’s and groom’s families rather than of the couple themselves.
Arnold, sometime look at tax data and share of income within each income % group. What you will find is since 1999 to 2013 (latest date available) is each % income group has about same % share of total income. So why are we saying income inequality has increased? Is there better data than the tax data? Not likely.
Look behind the headline numbers, and there is every reason to think income inequality has decreased. Government transfer payments, which are not included have increased. And given movement of amount required to be in top groups, every reason to think movement among groups has decreased.
I never believed it was assortative mating changing the world but the reality that women and minorities were equal in the work force. Two generations ago a many of women CEOs or government officials were housewives and spent a lot time working in the church or community. I remember my Mom helping cook spaghetti dinner on Wednesday service for instance. And it took two generations (really probably another couple future generations) for women to truly be treated equally in education, parental raising and career. On the flip side, this is one reason why traditional communities have less power of its citizens. In that it was the house middle class model that help organize a lot of the church activities that made it the center of social networks that don’t exist today. (I suspect we are going to be returning to single income families but we will see.) And I assumed most of the assortative mating studies measured the past incorrectly using education levels because men/women ratios have changed so much the last 60 years.
Given the 2016, it must be remembered that HRC was ‘controversial’ in the 1992 as a partner to husband President not the traditional wife First Lady role of Nancy or Barbara Bush.
This kind of struck me funny. Instead of “it took decades for women to be equal in the workforce” we could instead say “it took men a million years to invent the stuff that allowed women to keep up.”
And this is the thanks we get!