Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17914
Authors: Gregory Clark; Neil Cummins
Abstract: It is widely believed that women value social status in marital partners more than men, leading to female marital hypergamy, and more female intergenerational social mobility. A recent paper on Norway, for example, reports significant female hypergamy, even today, as measured by parental status of men and women in partnerships. Using evidence from more than 33 million marriages and 67 million births in England and Wales 1837-2022 we show that there was never within this era any period of significant hypergamous marriage by women. The average status of women’s fathers was always close to that of their husbands’ fathers. Consistent with this there was no differential tendency in England of men and women to marry by social status. The evidence is of strong symmetry in marital behaviors between men and women throughout. There is also ancillary evidence that physical attraction cannot have been a very significant factor in marriages in any period 1837-2021, based on the correlation observed in underlying social abilities.
Keywords: hypergamy; marriage; social mobility
JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| No significant hypergamy by women in English marriage from 1837 to 2021 (J12) | Average occupational status of brides' fathers was close to that of grooms' fathers (J12) |
| Women do not show more social mobility in their marital pairings than men (J12) | Both genders match to partners in a similar manner across the parent status distribution (J12) |
| No differential tendency to marry across family status for women compared to men (J12) | Equivalent marriage rates across the social spectrum (J12) |
| Physical appearance was a modest determinant of matching in marriage (J12) | High correlation of underlying social abilities suggests physical attractiveness is not a significant factor (C52) |