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Title: Love, Marriage, and Economic Inequality in the American Brain Hub: Occupational Assortative Mating across Changing Labor Markets
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: The marked increase in income inequality over recent decades has become something of a preoccupation in this country—and rightly so. High levels of income inequality may adversely impact social outcomes as diverse as political participation, crime, health, and economic growth. Such levels of inequality are even more concerning given low rates of socioeconomic mobility. Contemporary to observed increases in income inequality, the U.S. also saw the rise of metropolitan “brain hubs,” labor markets characterized by rapidly growing service and technology industries and by higher average wages. In this paper, we examine how the changing industry and occupation composition of metropolitan-area labor markets is associated with patterns of romantic partnering by occupation from 1970 to the present. We contend that the advent of the American brain hub led to increases in occupational homogamy among couples. We also evaluate whether occupational assortative mating has contributed to differences in household income between metropolitan labor markets. In doing so, we establish the extent to which brain hubs and other metropolitan labor markets contribute to increases over time in newlywed assortative mating by lower and higher paying occupations and thus to increases in household income differences.
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Authors: McClintock, Elizabeth, A; Andrew, Megan
Conference Name: Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2017
Publisher Location: Chicago, IL
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare
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