ABSTRACT Objective This study examines how educational assortative mating—particularly educational homogamy—shapes household net worth in urban China. Background Despite private wealth emerging as a critical indicator of financial security and social status in post‐reform China, the family‐level processes that shape wealth accumulation remain underexplored. Methods Using nationally representative data from the 2019 China Household Finance Survey and residualized quantile regression, this study assesses how spousal educational pairings are associated with wealth across the distribution and considers how the spouses' division of paid labor may moderate these relationships. Results The findings show that college‐educated spouses enjoy both the highest wealth return rates and the largest absolute wealth premiums relative to other educational pairings. The wealth premium is particularly pronounced at both ends of the wealth distribution and is stronger for nonhousing assets. Educational hypogamy and hypergamy yield similarly distributed wealth returns, with non‐college‐educated spouses being the most disadvantaged pairing, particularly in the lower wealth quantiles. Dual employment enhances overall wealth accumulation, with particularly strong effects at the lower end of the wealth distribution and for nonhousing wealth, and it amplifies returns to all educational pairings, except for educational hypergamy, although its effects taper in the higher wealth quantiles. Conclusion This study reveals how educational sorting and spouses' division of paid labor work together to contribute to emerging patterns of economic inequality in China.
Wang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.