Marriage Migration: Just Another Case of Positive Assortative Matching?

Aycan E. Celikaksoy, Aarhus School of Business
Helena Skyt Nielsen, Aarhus Universitet
Mette Verner, Aarhus School of Business

It is a stylized fact that marriage formation generally involves positive assortative matching (PAM) on education. We test whether this is also the case for immigrants who tend to import their spouses and potentially use education as an exchange mechanism. We find that only women match positively on education. For Turks the results robustly confirm PAM, whereas for Pakistanis there is no evidence of PAM. For men there is local support to the exchange hypothesis, since cultural assimilation or conflicts with parents, through less spouse import, increase the likelihood of marrying a highly educated spouse. JEL classification: J12, J15 Keywords: assortative mating, homogamy, exchange, marriage migration, spouse import.