Abstract # 7

Bernardi, Fabrizio. Who marries whom? Educational homogamy in Italy. In: H.-P. Blossfeld and A. Timm (Eds.), Educational systems as marriage markets in modern societies. A comparison of thirteen countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

The aim of this paper is to study changes in educational homogamy in Italy. Two opponent hypotheses are tested. The first hypothesis, drawn from modernisation theory, predicts a decrease in educational homogamy across cohorts. The second hypothesis suggests that the educational system segments the marriage and favours educational homogamy. Since participation in education has increased over cohorts, one can predict an increase of educational homogamy. The empirical analysis is based on retrospective life-history data for a nationally representative sample of the Italian population. In order to evaluate trends across cohorts, I have computed generalised odds ratios for cohort specific marriage tables. Then, I have studied the mechanisms underlying the observed trends by means of event history analysis models. The results show that the chances of marring a partner with the same level of education have increased across cohorts, particularly for the highly educated individuals. Overall these results speak against the hypothesis of a decreasing level of homogamy drawn from the modernisation theory, while support is found for the prediction of an increasing segmentation of marriage opportunities, parallel to the increase of participation in the educational system.