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This paper reports trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003 in the United States. Analyses of census and Current Population Survey data show that educational homogamy decreased from 1940 to 1960 but increased from 1960 to 2003. From 1960 to the early 1970s, increases in educational homogamy were generated by decreasing intermarriage among groups of relatively well-educated persons. College graduates, in particular, were increasingly likely to marry each other rather than those with less education. Beginning in the early 1970s, however, continued increases in the odds of educational homogamy were generated by decreases in intermarriage at both ends of the education distribution. Most striking is the decline in the odds that those with very low levels of education marry up. Intermarriage between college graduates and those with "some college" continued to decline but at a more gradual pace. As intermarriage declined at the extremes of the education distribution, intermarriage among those in the middle portion of the distribution increased. These trends, which are similar for a broad cross section of married couples and for newlyweds, are consistent with a growing social divide between those with very low levels of education and those with more education in the United States.
Patterns of who marries whom have implications for the formation of families, the maintenance of boundaries between groups, the extent of inequality among families, and the intergenerational transmission of social and genetic traits (e.g., Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Epstein and Guttman 1984; Fernández and Rogerson 2001; Johnson 1980; Kalmijn 1991a, 1991b; Mare 1991, 2000). Educational assortative marriage has received particular attention from scholars because of the role that education plays in structuring marriage markets, in the intergenerational transmission of social position, and in determining socioeconomic outcomes (e.g., Blossfeld and Timm 2003; Kalmijn 1991a, 1991b; Mare 1991; Qian 1998; Qian and Preston 1993; Raymo and Xie 2000; Smits, Ultee, and Lammers 1998, 2000; Ultee and Luijkx 1990). Past research has shown strong evidence of increases in the educational resemblance of spouses since at least the 1960s (Kalmijn 1991a, 1991b; Mare 1991; Pencavel 1998; Qian and Preston 1993; Smits et al. 2000), giving rise to a concern that marriage patterns may contribute to growing economic and educational inequality (e.g., Fernández and Rogerson 2001; Krenier 1997;...