Constraints and conventions in African assortative mating

• In Event: 2340 - Social Inequality in Family Formation (Co-sponsored with the Section on Sociology of Population)

Abstract

Educational attainment is a central determinant of social positioning in African society, particularly as schooling has spread across the continent. When the educational composition of a population changes, longstanding systems of social stratification are transformed, including intra-marital assortative norms. The relative scarcity or abundance of a given credential influences marital sorting processes in two ways: by altering the composition of the population and by reconfiguring cultural conventions and gendered valuations of status. Using DHS data representing 32 sub-Saharan African countries and five decades of birth cohorts, we examine the prevalence and propensity of educational assortative outcomes as a function of educational access (the percentage of a cohort who ever attended school) and wife’s educational attainment. We demonstrate that educational expansion created gendered changes in educational compositions, which led to increased prevalence of hypergamy (wives who married “up”) in most countries, despite a growing aversion to hypergamy in nearly all countries and across all educational groups.

Authors

• Margaret Frye, University of Michigan

• Sara Lopus, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo