Social exchange or reinforcement of women’s educational advantage? The influence of educational assortative mating on occupational assortative mating for couples in Spain

Abstract

The reversal of the gender gap in education has transformed traditional patterns of homogamy, increasing the number of hypogamous couples. This change has been particularly intense in the case of Spain, a country of great interest due to the seemingly contradictory ambivalence of strong support for egalitarian attitudes and a high proportion of traditional couples. Using quarterly microdata from the Spanish Labour Force Survey between 2000 and 2018, applying generalised ordered-logit models, this research finds that educational hypogamy increases the probability of occupational hypogamy, but this transfer is not direct and depends on the occupational classification used. If possible economic rewards or gender differences in labour market access are considered, occupational hypogamy is considerably reduced and progress in women's educational attainment loses some of its positive influence. This result reinforces the importance of using different measures and indicators to analyse assortative mating, as well as different theoretical approaches to explain seemingly contradictory occupational equilibria.