Educational Homogamy in Ireland and the UK: Trends and Patterns

This paper examines the pattern of educational homogamy in Ireland and the UK. Using contemporary data on recent marriages from the early 1970s through to the mid 1990s, we show that these 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 see 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 the 1970s, in Ireland the strength of homogamy has first increased and then levelled off. Our findings are inconsistent with those 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 and first marriage.