Education and Attractiveness in Marriage Choices

between the brides' and the grooms' educational attainments and between their levels of attractiveness. After controlling for people's tendency to marry others with attributes similar to their own, however, the analysis shows that less attractive people are just as likely as more attractive people to have highly educated spouses. In particular, more attractive women are no more likely than less attractive women to have highly educated husbands. We suggest that the differences between our results and those of earlier research can be traced in part to the lack of attention paid to men's attractiveness in marriage choices.