Trends in Educational Assortative Mating Among First Married and Remarried Women in Japan

Fumiya Uchikoshi , University of Wisconsin-Madison
Shohei Yoda, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

Studies argued that second or higher order marriages are less homogamous compared with first marriages in terms of socio-economic traits. The difference in the degree of assortative mating, however, may change in recent cohorts. This study examines whether the educational hypogamy among remarried women has been more comparable to that of first-married women. While the theory of relative groups size expects that as the size of minority group increases, formerly-married men and women are increasingly exposed to opportunities to interact with never-married population, predicting relatively less hypogamy. On the other hand, the theory of status exchange predicts that the patterns of status exchange do not depends on its relative size. Using the National Fertility Survey in Japan, we found that formerly-married women are less likely to marry never married men, but the propensity is increasingly lowered, and the gap in propensity of hypogamy between first and remarried women has declined.

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 Presented in Session 4. Marriage, Family, Households, & Unions