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Assortative Marriage and Geographic Sorting

Jiaming Mao, Jiayi Wen

arXiv 18 Feb 2025 · Econometrics · 1 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2502.12867 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. experienced a significant rise in geographic sorting and educational homogamy, with college graduates increasingly concentrating in high-skill cities and marrying similarly educated spouses. We develop and estimate a spatial equilibrium model with local labor, housing, and marriage markets, incorporating a marriage matching framework with transferable utility. Using the model, we estimate trends in assortative preferences, quantify the interplay between marital and geographic sorting, and assess their combined impact on household inequality. Welfare analyses show that after accounting for marriage, the college well-being gap grew substantially more than the college wage gap.

Citation extraction

37
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109
in-text mentions
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distinct cited
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main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Choo, E. and Siow, A (2006) Who marries whom and why1.00063100%
2Diamond, R (2016) The determinants and welfare implications of us workers' diverging location choices by skill: 1980-20000.96922691%
3Eika, L., Mogstad, M., and Zafar, B (2019) Educational assortative mating and household income inequality0.94112483%
4Moretti, E (2013) Real wage inequality0.9098475%
5Greenwood, J., Guner, N., Kocharkov, G., and Santos, C (2014) Marry your like: Assortative mating and income inequality0.88513469%
6Greenwood, J., Guner, N., Kocharkov, G., and Santos, C (2016) Technology and the changing family: A unified model of marriage, divorce, educational attainment, and married female labor-force…0.73732100%
7Saiz, A (2010) The geographic determinants of housing supply0.73732100%
8Fan, J. and Zou, B (2022) The Dual Local Markets: Family, Jobs, and the Spatial Distribution of Skills *0.69351100%
9Gihleb, R. and Lang, K (2020) Educational homogamy and assortative mating have not increased0.6443267%
10Chiappori, P.-A., Dias, M. C., and Meghir, C (2020) Changes in assortative matching: Theory and evidence for the us0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 38 scored citations.