Educational Assortative Mating in South Korea: Trends 1930-1998

We examine how the association between the educational levels of husbands and wives has changed in Korea over a period of seven decades, which cover all the important periods of the country's modern history. Our results show that educational assortative mating in Korea has three major dimensions: (1) educational similarity (the tendency of people to marry within their own educational group), (2) uniform association (the tendency of people who marry outside their educational group to marry a partner with a closely related educational level), and (3) gender asymmetry (the tendency of husbands to have a higher educational level than their wives). Uniform association and educational similarity among people with tertiary education (both absolute and relative) were found to increase significantly over the period studied. This indicates that in the last decades of the 20th century the boundary between the educational elite and the rest of Korean society has become stronger. One reason for this may be the increase in the preference among Korean males for a highly educated spouse, who can help their children to achieve better in the competitive Korean educational system.