Do Daughters gain from Hypogamy and Sons from Hypergamy? Parental Heterogamy and Children’s Educational Outcomes

Prior studieshaveabundantly documented the effect of parents’ educational attainment on theirchildren’s academicoutcomes, but research on the impact ofparents’ educational matingpattern remains limited. In this study, we investigatewhether women have an educational advantage when raised in hypogamous(the mother is more educatedthan the father)rather than hypergamous families(the father is the more educatedparent), whether men experiencea similar advantage when raised in hypergamous rather than hypogamous families, and whether these advantagesvary withthe prevalence of hypogamous families relative to hypergamous ones.We use data from four waves of the European Union Statistics and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey, yieldinga sampleof50,746 individuals residing in 28European countriesandborn between 1956 and 1995.Our results show that women benefit from being raised in hypogamous families, a positive effecton their educational attainmentthat didnot diminish as hypogamy became more prevalent relative to hypergamy. Men from hypergamous families experience a similar advantage, but this effect waned as hypergamy declined relative tohypogamy. Beyond contributing to research on the influenceof parental mating patternon children’s outcomes, our findings have relevant implications for research on thegender gap in education.