Correlation between father's age and husband's age: a case of imprinting?

Summary Analysis of the data from the tenth Italian census shows that women born to older fathers tend to marry older men. The correlations between the ages of the father and the husband in various situations were always found to be positive and significant when the age of the woman and her educational level were held constant. Correlation coefficients are higher in rural and economically less developed areas. Behavioural ‘imprinting’ is suggested as a possible explanation.