Educational homogamy and income differentiation across Europe

This research examines variation across contemporary Europe in the disequalizing effect of educational homogamy, using data from the 2004-08 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. We test the theoretical expectation of an association across countries between the strength of the link between education and income, and the potential contribution of educational homogamy to educational differentials in family income. First, we confirm the existence of a strong association between education and man’s and woman’s income in Eastern Europe, and a somewhat weaker association in Anglo-Saxon, Continental and, especially, in Northern Europe. Next, we find that regional variation in the strength of the link between education and income goes hand in hand with regional variation in the potential contribution of educational homogamy to family income inequality across Europe. That is, a general shift towards educational homogamy would contribute most to the differentials in family income by education in Eastern Europe, and least to the differentials in family income by education in the Nordic countries. We relate these regional patterns to the general characteristics of welfare state regime types, focusing mainly on the degree of social stratification and the level of gender equality