Educational Homogamy in Ireland and the UK:
Trends and Patterns
affinerBrendan Halpin
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Department of Government and Society
University of Limerick
Tak Wing Chan
Department of Sociology
University of Oxford
July15,2001
Educational Homogamy in Ireland and the UK:
Trends and Patterns
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Abstract
This paper examines the pattern of educational homogamy in Ireland and the UK. Using contemporary data on recent marriages from the early1970s through to the mid 1990s,we show that the two countries share a broadly similar pattern of educational homogamy,which is quasi-symmetric in character,with no hypergamy over and above that which can be attributed to the marginals.Summarising over all three time points, we e no evidence that the strength of homogamy is stronger in Ireland than in the UK. But we discern a clear inter-country difference in how the net strength of homogamy has changed over time.While it has declined in the UK since the1970s,in Ireland the strength of homogamy hasfirst incread and then levelled off.Ourfindings are inconsistent with tho reported by Smit,Ultee and Lammers(1998).Instead,they are better understood in terms of Mare’s(1991)argument concerning the effects on homogamy of the timing of school departure andfirst marriage.
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1Educational homogamy and social stratification Educational qualifications are a key determinant of life chance in industrial societies. They are also a strong correlate of lifestyle and cultural tastes.Furt
hermore,schools and universities provide a context in which young people meet each other.For the reasons,education has always been important in mate choice.Specifically,there is a strong tendency for educational for people with the same or similar educational qualifications to marry each other.没有准考证号怎么查六级成绩
But the pattern and the degree of educational homogamy might be changing.First, there has been substantial educational expansion in western societies over the twentieth century,and in particular over the last twentyfive years.Secondly,the gender gap in educational attainment has drastically narrowed or,in some cas,even disappeared. This changes the opportunity structure of the marriage market.For example,while women tended to marry better qualified men in the past,the narrowing of the gender gap would limit the opportunity for women to marry up.
diagonalThirdly,recent changes in women’s role in the labour market and the family might also affect mate choice.If married women now expect,and are expected,to work in the labour market and contribute to the family income,other things being equal,women with high earning potential(for which education is a good predictor)would become more desirable as marriage partner.Highly qualified men would be in a stronger posi-tion to attract highly qualified women.While men with less qualifications might also want to attract highly qualified women,they would have to ttle for a less qualified match.Such proc
ess might lead to a greater degree of educational homogamy.
Fourthly,as Mare(1991)demonstrates,life cour pattern,especially the time gap between leaving school and getting married,affects educational homogamy.Tho who get married shortly after leaving school are more likely to marry a classmate,and classmates tend to have the same qualifications.1In most industrial societies,the mean
school leaving age has been rising over the post-war period,while the mean age offirst marriage hasfirst fallen and then rin sharply(e below).This means that the time gap between school and marriage has been narrowing up to the early to mid1970s, and then the time gap has stabilid or perhaps widened slightly.The corresponding effect of this is a ri and then a fall in educational homogamy.
This paper takes two countries,Ireland and the UK,2which display both consid-erable cultural commonality and quite dramatic differences in their social structures, and examines the educational patterning of marriage from the early1970s to the mid 1990s,using contemporary data on recent marriages.
2Recent rearch and national contexts
A comparison of Ireland and the UK is uful becau it allows us to test two keyfind-ings of recent cross-national rearch on educational homogamy.Analyzing data from 65countries,Smit et al.(1998)report an inverted-shaped relationship between level of economic development and educational homogamy:as a country becomes econom-ically more developed,educational homogamyfirst increas,then peaks and eventu-ally declines.They believe this inverted-curve is the composite result of two social forces which dominate at different phas of economic development.On the one hand, as the effect of education on future socioeconomic status increas,qualifications be-comes progressively more important in mate choice.This means a positive relationship between economic development and educational homogamy.Smits et al.call this the status attainment hypothesis.However,after a certain level of economic development has been reached,Smits et al.argue,people would be able to afford the luxury of“ro-mantic love”,and the cold efficiency of life chance calculation that is associated with educational homogamy would become less important.They call this the“romantic love”hypothesis.
Smits et al.also report religious-cultural variation in educational homogamy,claim-ing that Catholic,Muslim and Confucian countries have higher levels of educational homogamy than Protestant countries.Smits et al.attribute the higher level of educa-tional homgamy among catholics t
o their cultural conrvatism:becau catholics tend to hold more traditional values over marriage and family issues,status consideration would be more important in mate choice.
Raymo and Xie(2000)point out that although Smits et al.are really interested in over time trend within country,becau trend data is not available to them,Smits et al.have ud cross-ctional data from countries at different levels of economic development.The implicit assumption is that the time path followed by today’s indus-trializing countries is esntially the same as that taken by the industrialid countries in the past.Since this might not be a reasonable assumption,Raymo and Xie argue that thefindings of Smits d to be tested with true trend data.Having examined data from four countries(China,Japan,Taiwan and the United States)and two periods (roughly the early1970s and the mid1980s),Raymo and Xie partially confirm the findings of Smits et al.:a clear trend towards less homogamy in all four countries,3 but no evidence that the Confucian countries in their sample having a higher level of homogamy than their Protestant he United States).
We wish to test the claims of Smits et al.further in the same spirit as Raymo and Xie.Let usfirst describe a few background features of Ireland and the UK that are relevant to the issue under consideration.
2.1Religion and cultural valuespreacher
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Ireland and the UK have a shared history and a shared language,and are the only completely insular EU states.Many of the institutions of state,and to some extent the view of the rest of the world,are conquently similar.However,there are deep cultural differences,and the best part of a century of parate development has meant
照顾好我的眼睛that institutions such as the education system bear incomplete remblances.
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To focus on the similarities and differences,we can characteri Britain as a rel-atively cular/protestant society with a very long history of urbanid industrialism. The Republic of Ireland,in contrast,is a late-industrialising society with a substantial rural ctor,and has a high(though declining)level of religious participation which is very predominantly Catholic.Britain,though formally a theocracy,has a strong tradi-tion of liberal–cular politics and very low levels of active religiosity in the general population,while Ireland,with formal paration of church and state,has a tradition of religious conrvatism informing both politics and people such that the law has tended to embody a great deal of Catholic conrvative values.Tellingly,for instance,the divorce rate in Britain is among the highest in Europe(Haskey1996),while in Ireland divorce became legal only in1997.
2.2The educational system
The overall structure of the educational system in both countries have not been dra-matically different.One respect in which the common institutional history does make for similarities is in the university systems.The Irish system was established before independence and is modelled on the English system,and thus we can treat university education as meaning‘the same thing’in both countries.The primary systems also have common roots in the nineteenth century,but Ireland’s system has been from the beginning more clearly denominational and under effective church control.
There is a greater difference at the cond level.In the UK,condary education became free and universal with the1944Education Act.Under the provision of this Act,pupils were assigned to one of three types of condary schools(grammar,tech-nical,and condary modern)according to the results of an exam which they took at the age of eleven.The‘11-plus’exam was abolished in1965,and the tripartite system was replaced by a single type,the comprehensive school.Along with the reforms, the minimum school-leaving age was raid to15in1947,and then to16in1973/4.
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