Education and marriage: the shift from female hypergamy to hypogamy in Belgium, a 20th century cohort analysis

One of the key social trends of the 20th century has been the expansion of participation in education. Using detailed retrospective information from the 1981 and 2001 censuses, this paper investigates how this expansion is associated with major trends in nuptiality in Belgium. We focus specifically on the changing gender balance in education and how this is related to the likelihood and timing of marriage and to patterns of educational assortative mating. Our empirical analysis shows that marriage was getting more universal, happening at an earlier age and more often heterogamous in term of ed... Mehr ...