Educational assortative mating as a determinant of changing household income inequality : a 21-country study

Despite the intuitive notion that educational homogamy matters for the distribution of economic resources across households, existing research finds that changes in educational homogamy have had little impact on inequality between households. In this article, we document whether this conclusion generalizes to 21 countries and aim to understand the reasons why. We use data from the Luxembourg Income Studies to simulate the impact of both observed and hypothetical changes in educational homogamy on inequality. If educational homogamy had remained stable over time, the estimated difference betwee... Mehr ...