Preliminary Please Do Not Cite or Quote Without Authors ’ Permission INCOME INEQUALITY AND EDUCATIONAL ASSORTATIVE MATING:

This paper investigates an unanticipated consequence of rising income inequality, namely changes in patterns of educational assortative mating. The association between spouses’ educational attainments has important implications for economic and social inequalities among families and households. Over the past 40 years in the U.S., the resemblance of husbands ’ and wives ’ educational attainments has increased markedly. For example, the proportion of couples in which spouses share the same broad education category increased by approximately 20 percent and the odds of educational homogamy increased by about 25 percent during this period (Schwartz and Mare 2005). Although rising inequality among households may be a consequence of increasing spousal resemblance on educational attainment, income inequality among individuals may itself be a cause of trends in educational assortative mating. Rising earnings inequality has resulted in increasing returns to education and thus wider economic and social gaps between education groups. These widening gaps may account for couples ’ increasing tendency to marry along educational lines. In this paper, we evaluate this argument by analyzin