International Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Assortative Mating for Educational Attainment

Abstract

Previous studies have found a high degree of assortative mating for educational attainment (r =.56). However, this can be confounded by cohort effects or country effects, where certain nations may have more pronounced assortative mating than others. In addition, method variance regarding how educational attainment is measured may also result in heterogeneity of effect sizes. Effect sizes were gathered from various datasets and from academic literature, resulting in a large collection of effect sizes (k = 1498, n = 9,159,098), spanning 84 different countries. Assortative mating for educational attainment was stronger than what previous literature suggested (r =.66, [.64,.68]), largely due to the fact that assortative mating for educational attainment is stronger when latent methods are used. The strongest predictors of assortative mating for education between countries were individualism (r = −.61, p