Marrying Your Equal Boosts Inequality
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Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Rich and poor Americans are slowlybut surely staking out separate lives. Increasingly, they havebeen moving to different communities, and more and more they arealso marrying people of similar income and educationalbackgrounds. This is a phenomenon social scientists callassortative mating.
In 2005, 58 percent of wives with a high school diplomawere married to men with the same amount of education, newresearch by economist Jeremy Greenwood of the University ofPennsylvania and three colleagues shows. In 1960, by contrast,only 42 percent of wives with high school diplomas were marriedto men with the same level of education.