IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17814.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Almar, Frederik

    (Aarhus University)

  • Friedrich, Benjamin

    (Northwestern University)

  • Reynoso, Ana

    (University of Michigan)

  • Schulz, Bastian

    (Aarhus University)

  • Vejlin, Rune Majlund

    (Aarhus University)

Abstract

This paper revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of “ambition types” that is based on starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with detailed educational programs. We find a substantial increase in assortative matching by educational ambition over time, and the marriage market explains more than 40% of increasing inequality since 1980. In contrast, sorting trends are flat with the commonly-used educational level categorization. We conclude that the mapping from education to types matters crucially for conclusions about how education-based marriage market sorting contributes to rising income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Almar, Frederik & Friedrich, Benjamin & Reynoso, Ana & Schulz, Bastian & Vejlin, Rune Majlund, 2025. "Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 17814, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17814
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17814.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inequality; marital sorting; education;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17814. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.