Marital Matching and Women’s Intergenerational Mobility in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century US

This paper characterizes the evolution of marital matching on age, nativity, and education as well as changes in women’s intergenerational mobility during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We find that age homogamy changed very little for women born in the 19th century, which makes the rapid transition to smaller within-couple age gaps in the 20th century a departure from a 100-year trend. As mass immigration to the US transformed the nation, the likelihood that a woman had a father-in-law who was of similar nativity to her father decreased, suggesting that intermarriage helped stir the US melting pot. In the late 19th century, assortative matching on education changed little, even as educational attainment soared during the high-school movement. Lastly, between 1900 and 1940, women’s intergenerational mobility increased, as measured by her husband’s occupational standing relative to her father’s. We conclude that, even as a dynamic marriage market reduced the importance of father’s heritage and occupational standing, women’s own educational attainment remained a powerful force in shaping their socioeconomic status.