Colleges, Assortative Mating, and Intergenerational Mobility in Twentieth-Century America / Ran Abramitzky, Santiago Pérez, Joseph Price.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Abramitzky, Ran.

Contributor:

Pérez, Santiago.

Price, Joseph.

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w35602.

NBER working paper series no. w35602

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2026.

Summary:

We use newly digitized records for 1.2 million students at 60 co-educational U.S. colleges, 1915-1943, linked to enrollment records for their children through 1963, to study how colleges shape marital matching and the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage. About 6% of men and 9% of women marry someone from their own college. This homogamy is largely causal: within colleges, more different-sex classmates and longer campus overlap both raise same-college marriage. Same-college spouses are more educated, and this advantage persists across generations. Children of same-college couples more often attend selective colleges, with spousal education explaining a third of the gap.

Notes:

August 2026.

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