BlueSky Thinking Summary

The paper estimates the extent to which marital sorting on educational ambition contributes to contemporary income inequality.

Using forty years of Danish data, Benjamin Friedrich and his coauthors from the Kellogg School of Management classified educational programs according to their economic prospects, rather than by degree level.

The team found that there was a growing tendency for couples to select based on similar ambition levels.

This accounts for more than 40 per cent of change in inequality since 1980.

As highly ambitious people, especially women who entered high-earning professions, tend to marry within their cohorts, this trend accelerates.

The research puts forth the matter of how changes in the economic returns to education raise the measured marriage sorting effect, thereby aggravating income inequality.

According to it, implications for the transmission of wealth across generations call for nuanced policy responses.

It provides a critical view on the role marriage plays in the formation of economic inequalities for professionals interested in social impacts of education and dynamics of the labour market.