the mating game

American Demographics, July 1, 2002

Byline: REBECCA GARDYN

In the 1990 movie Pretty Woman , a penniless prostitute and a corporate mogul live happily ever after when they realize that true love knows no social status. It is a resplendent thought, but the demographic truth is that such rags-to-riches relationships are extraordinarily rare.

No matter how we try to romanticize the power of a love that knows no boundaries, America's marriage trends clearly show that we are, and probably always will be, a society segregated by social class. While it is true that the number of interracial and interfaith marriages has grown over the past few decades - certainly pointing to our collective acceptance of diversity - such unions still constitute a small share of total U.S. nuptials. (See sidebar, page 35.) Interracial marriages, for instance, make up just 3 percent of all unions, and even those, say researchers, are often between members of the same social class. And though the Internet has promised an opportunity for Americans from all walks of life to connect, most sociologists put little faith in its ability to level the playing field of our largely class-based marital bliss. The fact remains that Americans tend to marry people like themselves, especially when it comes to social rank. This tendency, known to sociologists as "homogamy" or "assortative mating," has become even more pronounced in the past 20 to 30 years, and many agree that it is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon.

When sociologists study inequalities in American life, they tend to focus on three major areas: race, gender and class, notes Pamela Smock, a demographer and associate director of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. In recent decades, affirmative action policies, increased equality in the workplace and more diversified schools have all helped to narrow racial and gender gaps. However, what hasn't changed is the overarching outline of social class. Says Smock: "The biggest open secret in America is that we do live in a very classist society. This is being played out quite clearly in the marriage market, and in how we choose our mates."

Measuring social class is not easy. When determining an individual's "class," some sociologists look at income or occupation, some examine educational attainment and others create models that include a complex mixture of all these variables. But when looking at social class homogamy within marriages, sociologists tend to agree that education is the most reliable measure of a couple's social status, since it is less likely to change over time than their income, for example. So if a couple marries immediately after finishing graduate school, and neither partner has been working, they may have a very low level of income. Yet because of their educational achievement, the couple has a high earnings potential and thus would be considered by researchers to be of a higher class than a couple made up of two high school dropouts, even if both couples had the same income. Therefore, while it is by no means a perfect measurement, many sociologists use education as their indicator of social status when studying trends in union formation.

Brandeis University sociologist Ellen Rosen analyzed data from the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey (GSS) for American Demographics and found that while today there is some intermarriage at the middle of the educational spectrum, there is extreme polarization at the highest and lowest ends. For instance, in 2000, 94 percent of married high school dropouts were wed to someone who was either a high school dropout themselves or had only a high school diploma, and 69 percent of married adults with advanced degrees were wed to someone with at least a bachelor's degree. Less than 1 percent of the most highly educated Americans had a spouse who did not complete high school.

This trend toward educational homogamy, or the tendency for men and women with similar educational achievement to marry each other, is not new, but it has seen slight increases over the past few decades. This rise attests to the continual presence of social barriers, rather than the breakdown of such barriers, as has been dramatized in Hollywood's fantasies. For example, in 2000, 58 percent of married bachelor's degree holders were wed to someone with at least a bachelor's degree, compared with 42 percent in 1976. Similarly, only 32 percent of college grads married someone with a high school diploma or less in 2000, compared with 56 percent who "married down" in 1976.

This growth in educational homogamy has everything to do with women's increased educational attainment and their mass entree into the work force since the 1970s, researchers say. Prior to the 1970s, men tended to "marry down," in terms of the education of their spouses, in part because of supply and demand: There were fewer women who met or surpassed men's own level of education.

Today, however, the number of women who receive a bachelor's or master's degree each year far surpasses the number of men who do so, and that trend is expected to continue, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The math is simple: More educated women in the marriage market has and will continue to better the odds of more matches between highly educated people. Similarly, since there are fewer men and women today who either did not complete or only completed high school, and since such prospects tend to be less desirable to those on the higher learning rungs, less educated people tend to stick together.