Abstract
There is strong assortative mating by field of study. To examine to which extent this is due to self selection or to a causal effect of access to specific ”marriage markets”, we use data from participants in admission lotteries of four oversubscribed studies in the Netherlands. For each of the four studies, we find that the winning compliers of an admission lottery are significantly more likely than the losing compliers to have a partner from the lottery study, whereas losing compliers are only marginally more likely to have a partner from the lottery study than would occur under random matching. These results indicate that assortative mating by field of study is largely due to marriage market access and that self selection plays a minor role. JEL-codes: I26, J12, J13.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 102149 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-7 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Economics of Education Review |
| Volume | 84 |
| Early online date | 29 Jul 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2021 |
Bibliographical note
© 2021.Funding
We gratefully acknowledge valuable comments from the editor (McKinley Blackburn), an anonymous referee, Magne Mogstad, Erik Plug and from seminar and workshop participants in Amsterdam, Bonn, Bristol, Catanzaro, Gothenburg, Helsinki and Mainz. A previous version of the paper circulated under the title ”Field of study and family outcomes”. The non-public micro data used in this paper are available via remote access to the Microdata services of Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Oosterbeek received support from the Research Council of Norway Toppforsk grant no. 275906. Van der Klaauw acknowledges financial support from a Vici-grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Research Council of Norway Toppforsk | 275906 |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek |