The Change in Educational Assortative Mating in Serbia and Slovenia, 1970–2020

Abstract

This paper explores marital matching patterns from the perspective of the partners’ educational attainment, focusing on the link between gender asymmetry in education and educational hypergamy. In order to assess to what extent the tendency for women to marry men of higher educational status is related to the educational gender gap in Serbia and Slovenia, we calculate an index for women’s educational advantage, and an index for the prevalence of educational hypergamy. Our results confirm the following: the growth of education is associated with an increase in female educational advantage; the relationship between female educational advantage and educational hypergamy is strongly negative; and there are no significant differences in assortative mating patterns between Serbia and Slovenia.