Partner selection is a vital feature of human behavior with important consequences forindividuals, families, and society. Hypergamy occurs when a husband’s earning capacitysystematically exceeds that of his wife. We provide a theoretical framework that rationalizeshypergamy even in the absence of gender differences in the distribution of earningscapacity. Using parental earnings rank, a predetermined measure of earnings capacity thatsolves the simultaneity problem of matching affecting earnings outcomes, we show thathypergamy is an important feature of Norwegian mating patterns. A vignette experimentidentifies gender differences in preferences that can explain the observed patterns.
Difference between women and men by vigintiles of parental rank Figure 3. Probability of having had multiple partners by 2015. By own and parental earnings rank Note: The graphs cover the 19521959 birth cohorts, and show the fractions who have been married and/or had a child with at least two different persons by 2015. The two lower panels include 95 percent confidence intervals. 9 We restrict attention to men and women born before 1960 because a considerable fraction of multiple matches occurs after the age of 40 years. Using this approach, we capture all matches before the age of 56 years. 18 Table 3 presents IV estimates of the impact of own earnings rank on the probability of mating more than once. Based on the linear estimates in columns (1)(3), we find that the probability of mating with multiple partners increases with earnings rank for men, whereas it decreases with earnings rank for women. The quadratic estimates in columns (4)(6) indicate, however,
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Based on this model, we find a positive marginal effect above the median rank for both men and women. Table 3. Gender difference in multiple partnerships. Instrumental variables (IV) estimates Own rank Own rank squared (1) Men 0.04** (0.017) Linear model (2) Women 0.23*** (0.022) (3) Gender diff. 0.27*** (0.028) (4) Men 2.4*** (0.21) 0.022*** (0.002) Quadratic model (5) Women 4.0*** (0.31) 0.035*** (0.003) (6) Gender diff. 1.5*** (0.37) 0.013*** (0.004)
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Mean outcome N 0.13 200,074 0.11 202,449 0.13 200,074 0.11 202,449 Note: Own earnings rank is instrumented with parental earnings rank. Estimates and standard errors are multi plied by 100, such that they are measured in percentage points. The gender differences in columns (3) and (6) are evaluated within a joint model with gender interactions on all variables. Robust standard errors in parenthe ses. **** indicates statistical significant at the 10/5/1 percent level. 4.3 Partner rank The final testable implication of hypergamy is that within couples, men tend to be higher ranked than women. Based on own earnings rank, the upper left panel of Figure 4 shows that there is a strong tendency in this direction. Men are considerably higher ranked at all levels of the earnings rank distribution. On average, the husband is ranked approximately 78 percen
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These ranking differences may be a sign of household specialization or of hypergamy. However, the gender gap in average earnings does not influence the rankings in Figure 4, as the genderspecific ranking ensures that men and women by construction have exactly the same rank distribution. To disentangle hypergamy from specialization, we turn to the parental earnings ranks (righthand side of Figure 4). We see the same pattern; the gender gap is statistically signifi cant at all ranks. However, the difference is much smaller than that based on own income, which may be because of specialization or because parental earnings rank is a noisy indicator of own earnings potential. On average, his parental earnings rank is about 0.75 percentile higher than hers. To assess the implications of such a difference in parental earnings rank for 19
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