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More people now are delaying marriage until after they have entered the labor market. Occupation has therefore become increasingly important in providing opportunities for meeting potential spouses. By bringing the school-to-work linkage literature into assortative mating research, this study illuminates the important roles of field of study and school-to-work linkages in shaping occupational homogamy among college graduates. We analyze 41,220 college-educated newly-wed men and women from the 2009–2018 American Community Surveys. Multilevel logistic regressions show that occupational homogamy is more likely to occur among college-graduated men and women if they share the same vocational-specific field of study as their spouse. The results suggest that vocational-specific fields of study that channel college graduates into a targeted set of occupations increase the likelihood of occupational homogamy. This study underlines the importance of the heterogeneous school-to-work linkages in shaping occupational marriage markets, assortative mating outcomes, and the contours of social closure in society.
Han et al. (Tue,) studied this question.