Having met at school and similarity between couple members’ educational levels and careers

With the advent of mass education, the number of people forming couple relationships at school—especially their first one—began to rise. Couple relationships that get underway in the context of education generally prove more homogamous than couple relationships that did not begin that way: the former set of partners tend to attain similar educational levels and occupational statuses. This in turn means that mass education may have had the effect of polarizing couples into more qualified and less qualified ones. However, the homogamy that may characterize the beginning of a couple relationship that started in school does not seem to have enduring effects on spouses’ or partners’ occupational positions, for two reasons. First, intimate partners may separate: first couple relationships formed at school do not always last until the end of the couple members’ careers. Second, the gender inequalities affecting careers ultimately appear stronger than homogamy. Therefore, because being homogamous at one time does not mean being homogamous throughout a couple’s existence (see source title: “Once Homogamous, Always Homogamous?”), it is logical to conclude that mass education in France has not led to a major increase in intercouple inequalities. INED and DARES researchers Milan Bouchet-Valat and Sébastien Grobon, drawing on data from the joint INED-INSEE “EPIC” study of individual and conjugal trajectories (Étude des Parcours Individuels et Conjugaux, 2013-2014), explain how to understand this phenomenon.

People in France increasingly enter their first couple relationship in an educational context. Mass education and the trend to longer education, which began in France in the 1960s, have sharply increased the proportion of first couple relationships that begin before individuals have completed their formal education. Whereas for people born in 1950, fewer than two in ten first relationships began before completion of the students’ formal education, five out of ten such relationships of men born in 1980 began in school, and six in ten for women born the same year (keeping in mind that women enter couple relationships earlier than men). The proportion of people who report meeting their first intimate partner in an educational framework also increased between those two generations, from one in ten to two in ten for women, and to three in ten for men. 

However, if we consider relationships in progress at the time of the survey rather than first relationships, the increase is smaller, due to the fact that post-education separations and repartnering have also increased: only 45% of unions in progress were also the partners’ first relationship. This means that, actually, only one in ten people born in 1950, and only two in ten men and three in ten women born in 1980, met their spouse- or partner-at-time-of-survey at school. For the same cohorts, the proportion of first encounters in school with future partner or spouse only rose from a little over one in twenty to one in ten. What’s more, that already slight increase may be overestimated given the fact that partners belonging to recent generations have lived less time together than partners from older generations and have therefore been less exposed to the risk of separation. 

Meeting one’s partner in an educational context does work in favor of educational homogamy. Whereas spouses in 35% of all couples in France have the same level of education, the figure rises to 50% for couples who met in school. In direct contrast, relationships that got started on internet or in the framework of leisure activities are considerably less homogamous: the respective rates for those two contexts are 26% and 27%. And between the two extremes we find the workplace, a public place, and through friends or family; all three of those meeting contexts or paths are near the average. 

Yet contrary to what we might assume, the two persons who meet and enter a relationship in an educational setting are the least homogamous of all in terms of social background: only 28% of them have fathers who belong to the same socio-occupational category (as against 33% of first meetings altogether). Conversely, social background homogamy is highest (39%) between partners who meet in a public place (as mentioned, homogamy for couples who meet in this type of setting is within the average).

Educational homogamy is not enough in and of itself to determine how close or distant partners’ occupations and occupational statuses will be throughout their relationship. This is because women and men do not get the same occupational returns from their educational degrees over the course of their occupational lives and careers. These divergences are due to gender inequalities on the labor market, the effects of which grow stronger as careers proceed—to the detriment of women. While, on average, women’s educational attainment is now higher than men’s, women are penalized for having children in the course of their careers, and also continue to suffer from stereotypes that devalue their work abilities. 

So among couples whose members have the same level of education, the man has a higher occupational position than his female partner, on average. This disparity is particularly wide when the man has the higher educational degree. And, paradoxically, couples in which the woman has the higher degree are the ones where the man’s and woman’s occupational positions are closest, the most homogamous. 

In sum, during their education, partners of similar social “feather” “flock together.” But more couples break up today than before, and due to the occupational inequalities between the man and woman forming a couple, the similarity in educational levels attained at school is not maintained throughout their conjugal life. Therefore, the rise in the proportion of couples who meet at school does not increase intercouple inequalities in France as much as one might think.

Source : Milan Bouchet-Valat et Sébastien Grobon, « Once Homogamous, Always Homogamous? Educational Level and Career Similarity of Couples in France Who Meet at School », Institut national d’études démographiques, Population 2019

Online: November 2019