The Wealth of Parents: Trends Over Time in Assortative Mating Based on Parental Wealth
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The Wealth of Parents: Trends Over Time in Assortative Mating Based on Parental Wealth Sander Wagner 1 & Diederik Boertien 2 & Mette Gørtz 3 # Population Association of America 2020
Abstract This article describes trends in parental wealth homogamy among union cohorts formed between 1987 and 2013 in Denmark. Using high-quality register data on the wealth of parents during the year of partnering, we show that the correlation between partners’ levels of parental wealth is considerably lower compared with estimates from research on other countries. Nonetheless, parental wealth homogamy is high at the very top of the parental wealth distribution, and individuals from wealthy families are relatively unlikely to partner with individuals from families with low wealth. Parental wealth correlations among partners are higher when only parental assets rather than net wealth are examined, implying that the former might be a better measure for studying many social stratification processes. Most specifications indicate that homogamy increased in the 2000s relative to the 1990s, but trends can vary depending on methodological choices. The increasing levels of parental wealth homogamy raise concerns that over time, partnering behavior has become more consequential for wealth inequality between couples. Keywords Wealth . Inequality . Assortative mating . Intergenerational processes .
Partnering Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-02000906-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Sander Wagner [email protected] Diederik Boertien [email protected] Mette Gørtz [email protected]
1
CREST/ENSAE, 5 Avenue Henry Le Chatelier, TSA 96642, 91764 Cedex Palaiseau, France
2
Center for Demographic Studies, Barcelona, Spain
3
University of Copenhagen and CEBI, Copenhagen, Denmark
S. Wagner et al.
Introduction Partnering behavior is a key determinant of various aspects of well-being (Schwartz 2013). From an economic point of view, marriage and cohabitation are a foundation for sharing many public goods, specialization, risk pooling, and the coordination of domestic labor among partners (Browning et al. 2014). Therefore, it is unsurprising that couples do not form at random or irrespective of partner’s characteristics and that marital sorting is a key feature of marriage models (Becker 1973, 1991; Lam 1988). Social scientists have long documented patterns of assortative mating based on ascribed characteristics, such as parental occupation and ethnicity (Kalmijn 1998; Schwartz 2013), as well as on acquired characteristics, such as education and earnings (Blossfeld 2009; Pencavel 1998; Rosenfeld 2008; Schwartz 2010; Schwartz and Mare 2005). Besides the impact of partnering on individual well-being, assortative mating has been of interest for research on social stratification because it potentially impacts the distribution of resources across households and shapes boundaries between social groups (Kremer 1997; Schwartz 2010, 20
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