nach oben

Demography

Erschienen in:

01.02.2013

Marital Sorting and Parental Wealth

verfasst von: Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, Alexandra Killewald

Erschienen in: Demography | Ausgabe 1/2013

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

The extent of marital sorting by socioeconomic background has implications for the intergenerational transmission of inequality, the role of marriage as a mechanism for social mobility, and the extent of cross-group interactions within a society. However, studies of assortative mating have disproportionately focused on spouses’ education, rather than their social origins. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and exploiting the unique genealogical design of the data set, we study the degree to which spouses sort on the basis of parental wealth. We find that the estimated correlation in parental wealth among married spouses, after controlling for race and age, is about .4. Importantly, we show that controlling for spousal education explains only one-quarter of sorting based on parental wealth. We show that our results are robust to accounting for measurement error in spousal reports of parental wealth and for selection into and out of marriage.

Vorheriger Artikel Time for Children: Trends in the Employment Patterns of Parents, 1967–2009

Nächster Artikel Moving Across Boundaries: Migration in South Africa, 1950–2000

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Nur mit Berechtigung zugänglich

See Solon (1992), Zimmerman (1992), Mulligan (1997), and Charles and Hurst (2003) for examples. See the review by Solon (1999) for a more extensive discussion.

The PSID elicits responses via “unfolding brackets” for those who did not provide an exact response. Respondents were asked whether their parents’ wealth was greater than or less than $25,000. If they responded greater than $25,000, they were subsequently asked whether it was greater than or less than $100,000. If they initially responded that it was less than $25,000, they were subsequently asked whether it was greater than or less than $1,000.

An exception occurs when one divorced parent is reported to have negative wealth and one positive. Because total wealth is unknown, it is not possible to meaningfully combine reports in this case.

Some assortative mating on the basis of parental wealth may reflect assortative mating on the basis of race, coupled with racial differences in parental wealth (see Oliver and Shapiro 1995; Conley 1999 and Barsky et al. 2002). We perform the analysis in Table 2 separately by race and find strong parental wealth sorting patterns within racial groups (whites and nonwhites).

There are too few interracial couples in the sample to control separately for each spouse’s race. We use the race of the husband, when it is available. Otherwise, we use the race of the wife.

More than 96 % of PSID parents reported positive wealth.

Allowing for full interactions of husbands’ and wives’ education levels does not diminish our TSLS estimates of parental wealth sorting, relative to the estimated coefficients in Panels B and C of Table 6.

All the detailed results, including the specific sample descriptions, can be found in the Online Resource 1.

Barsky, R., Bound, J., Charles, K. K., & Lupton, J. P. (2002). Accounting for the black-white wealth gap: A nonparametric approach. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 97, 663–673.CrossRef

Becker, G. S. (1973). A theory of marriage: Part I. Journal of Political Economy, 81, 813–846.CrossRef

Blau, P. M., & Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American occupational structure. New York: Wiley.

Burgess, E. W., & Wallin, P. (1943). Homogamy in social characteristics. The American Journal of Sociology, 49, 109–124.CrossRef

Centers, R. (1949). Marital selection and occupational strata. The American Journal of Sociology, 54, 530–535.CrossRef

Charles, K. K., & Hurst, E. (2003). The correlation of wealth across generations. Journal of Political Economy, 111, 1155–1182.CrossRef

Conley, D. (1999). Being black, living in the red: Race, wealth, and social policy in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Epstein, E., & Guttman, R. (1984). Mate selection in man: Evidence, theory, and outcome. Biodemography and Social Biology, 31, 243–278.CrossRef

Fernández, R., & Rogerson, R. (2001). Sorting and long-run inequality. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116, 1305–1341.CrossRef

Hout, M. (1982). The associations between husbands’ and wives’ occupation in two-earner families. The American Journal of Sociology, 88, 397–409.CrossRef

Kalmijn, M. (1991). Status homogamy in the United States. The American Journal of Sociology, 97, 496–523.CrossRef

Kremer, M. (1997). How much does sorting increase inequality. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 115–139.CrossRef

Lam, D. (1988). Marriage markets and assortative mating with household public goods: Theoretical results and empirical implications. Journal of Human Resources, 23, 462–487.CrossRef

Mare, R. D. (1991). Five decades of educational assortative mating. American Sociological Review, 56, 15–32.CrossRef

Mulligan, C. B. (1997). Parental priorities and economic inequality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Oliver, M. L., & Shapiro, T. M. (1995). Black wealth/white wealth: A new perspective on racial inequality. New York: Routledge.

Pagnini, D. L., & Morgan, S. P. (1990). Intermarriage and social distance among U.S. immigrants at the turn of the century. The American Journal of Sociology, 96, 405–432.CrossRef

Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1968–2007 Family, 1968–2007 Cross-Year Individual, public use data sets. (2010). Produced and distributed by the University of Michigan with primary funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Aging, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Ann Arbor, MI.

Pencavel, J. (1998). Assortative mating by schooling and the work behavior of wives and husbands. American Economic Review, 88, 326–329.

Rubin, Z. (1968). Do American women marry up? American Sociological Review, 33, 750–760.CrossRef

Schwartz, C. R., & Mare, R. D. (2005). Trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003. Demography, 42, 621–646.CrossRef

Solon, G. (1992). Intergenerational income mobility in the United States. American Economic Review, 82, 393–408.

Solon, G. (1999). Intergenerational mobility in the labor market. In O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (Eds.), Handbook of labor economics (Vol. 3, pp. 1761–1800). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Elsevier.

Uunk, W. J. G., Ganzeboom, H. B. G., & Róbert, P. (1996). Bivariate and multivariate scaled association models. An application to homogamy of social origin and education in Hungary between 1930 and 1979. Quality and Quantity, 30, 323–343.

Zimmerman, D. J. (1992). Regression toward mediocrity in economic stature. American Economic Review, 82, 409–429.

Titel: Marital Sorting and Parental Wealth
verfasst von: Kerwin Kofi Charles
Erik Hurst
Alexandra Killewald
Publikationsdatum: 01.02.2013
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Demography / Ausgabe 1/2013
Print ISSN: 0070-3370
Elektronische ISSN: 1533-7790
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0144-6

Springer Professional

Abstract

Bitte loggen Sie sich ein, um Zugang zu Ihrer Lizenz zu erhalten.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 1/2013

Your Place or Mine? On the Residence Choice of Young Couples in Norway

Family Planning and Women’s and Children’s Health: Long-Term Consequences of an Outreach Program in Matlab, Bangladesh

Investing in Children: Changes in Parental Spending on Children, 1972–2007

Impact of Road Traffic Deaths on Expected Years of Life Lost and Reduction in Life Expectancy in Brazil

Malthusian Dynamics in a Diverging Europe: Northern Italy, 1650–1881

Sun Belt Rising: Regional Population Change and the Decline in Black Residential Segregation, 1970–2009