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

Prior studies have abundantly documented the effect of parents’ educational attainment on their children’s academic outcomes, but research on the impact of parents’ educational mating pattern remains limited. In this study, we investigate whether women have an educational advantage when raised in hypogamous (the mother is more educated than the father) rather than hypergamous families (the father is the more educated parent), whether men experience a similar advantage when raised in hypergamous rather than hypogamous families, and whether these advantages vary with the 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, yielding a sample of 50,746 individuals residing in 28 European countries and born between 1956 and 1995. Our results show that women benefit from being raised in hypogamous families, a positive effect on their educational attainment that did not 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 to hypogamy. Beyond contributing to research on the influence of parental mating pattern on children’s outcomes, our findings have relevant implications for research on the gender gap in education.