Trends in educational homogamy in Central European Countries between 1976 and 2003

Tomáš Katrňák

Faculty of Social StudiesMasaryk University

Brno

katrnak@fss.muni.cz

Research theme• Educational homogamy in Czech, Slovak and Hungarian society

and trends in this homogamy between 1976 and 2003

• Educational homogamy is the indicator of “societal openness”, more concretely it is the indicator of educational differences and their role among people (Smits, Ultee, Lammers, 1998a; 1998b)

– High educational homogamy means, that people perceive educational differences as high and these differences are reflected in their marital option – in selection of husband or wife

– Lower educational homogamy indicates, that in perception of people the educational differences are not significant, the educational differences among people are not reflected in marital selection

– For instance Smits, Ultee a Lammers says: “(a) society in which many marriages take place between persons belonging to different social groups (…) can be considered a more open society than one in which few socially mixed marriages occur” (ASR 1998a: 265)

The aim of the research

• To map educational homogamy in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary

• To analyze trends in educational homogamy:

– In the period of socialism between 1976 and 1989 in all analyzed countries

– During the transformation from socialism to capitalism in the first half of nineties of 20th century

– In the beginning of the first decade of 21th century in all analyzed countries

• To answer the question about the trends in educational inequalities indicated by educational homogamy in all analyzed countries

Results of social mobility research in former socialistic countries

• Gerber and Hout (2005) analyzed intergenerational social mobility in Russian society between 1988 and 2000 and showed that class structure of Russian society is closing, because social fluidity is decreasing and inequalities in labor market are growing.

• Pollak and Müller (2002) formulated the same result in their comparison of intergenerational mobility in western and eastern part of Germany in nineties of 20th century. In both countries the class structure was closing and social fluidity was going down in this period.

Hypothesis concerning the trends educational homogamy in postsocialistic countries

• Gerber and Hout (2005) and Pollak and Müller (2002) showed, that we can expect the closing of class structure and the decrease of relative social mobility in former central European socialistic countries in nineties of 20th century

• Other social scientists (Ultee, Luijkx, 1994) showed that there is negative relationship between relative social mobility and relative educational homogamy

• Decrease of relative social mobility means the increase of educational homogamy and vice versa

• It means that we can expect, that relative educational homogamy is increasing in nineties of 20th century and educational diferences are growing (when relative social mobility is decreasing)

• The question is what happened with educational homogamy between 1976 and 1989 in all analyzed countries???

Data

• aggregated (tabulated) data

• All marriages sorted by man’s and woman’s education (elementary, vocational training, secondary, tertiary) in analyzed countries (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) in years (1976, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2000 and 2003 – period was 3 years)

• Structure of the data: 4 x 4 x 10 x 3 (M x W x Y x C)

• Source of data: National statistical offices

Women’s educational level

Year Men’s ed.

level EL VC HS TE Total

1976 EL 15456 3891 2129 103 21579 VT 12894 25892 10112 403 49301 HS 2363 4554 10493 913 18323 TE 243 561 3166 1753 5723 Total 30956 34898 25900 3172 94926 1979 EL 11784 2742 2228 117 16871 VT 10281 22312 9960 416 42969 HS 2488 3986 10950 1091 18515 TE 311 506 3460 1841 6118 Total 24864 29546 26598 3465 84473

10

20

30

40

50

60

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary

educational homogamy man's hypogamy and woman's hypergamy man's hypergamy and woman's hypogamy

per

cen

t

years

by country and over yearsFigure 1. Educational homogamy, heterogamy a hypergamy

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary

man-EL+woman-EL man-VT+woman-VT

man-HS+woman-HS man-TE+woman-TE

per

cen

t

years

Figure 2. Types of educational homogamy by country and over years

0

5

10

15

20

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary

man-VT+woman-EL man-HS+woman-EL man-TE+woman-EL

man-HS+woman-VT man-TE+woman-VT man-TE+woman-HS

per

cen

t

years

hypergamy by country and over yearsFigure 3. Types of educational man's hypogamy and woman's

0

5

10

15

20

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary

man-EL+woman-VT man-EL+woman-HS man-EL+woman-TE

man-VT+woman-HS man-VT+woman-TE man-HS+woman-TE

per

cen

t

years

hypogamy by country and over yearsFigure 4. Types of educational man's hypergamy and woman's

10

20

30

40

50

60

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary

man-EL man-VT man-HS man-TE

woman-EL woman-VT man-HS woman-TE

per

cen

t

years

Figure 5. Educational structure of marriages by country and over years

Type of analysis and standardization of the data

• Log linear and log-multiplicative analysis, because we can see changes in marginal distributions of men and women getting married in analyzed period in each country

• Because of comparative reasons it was done in each two-way table random sample M x W by their education

• The total N for each table was 25 000

• It means that I analyzed sample of 250 000 marriages in each country (Y x 25 000)

• The total number of analyzed marriages in all countries was 750 000 (C x Y x 10 000)

ResultsGoodness-of-fit statistics of models applied to data on educational assortative mating in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary between 1976 and 2003.

Model Description of the model df L2 Δ BIC

1) CYM CYW Null association 270 330 509.7 25.64 326 857

2) CYM CYW MW Constant association 261 5 862.5 2.85 2 332

3) CYM CYW MW D Constant association, blocked diagonals 145 718.7 0.52 –1 243

4) CYM CYW (MW) u D Additive uniform layer effect, blocked diagonals

116 366.3 0.37 –1 202

5) CYM CYW (MW) x D Log-multiplicative uniform layer effect, blocked diagonals

116 387.0 0.37 –1 182

6) model 5, φ constrained Log-multiplicative uniform layer effect, blocked diagonals, constraints φmin = φmax, φmin+1 = φmax-1

131 421.9 0.40 –1 350

7) model 5, φ quadratic Log-multiplicative uniform layer effect, blocked diagonals, φ quadratic trend

137 416.0 0.39 –1 437

Note: C – country; Y – year; M – men’s educational level; W – women’s educational level; D – blocked main diagonals; subscript u – additive uniform layer effect among tables; subscript x – multiplicative uniform layer effect among tables; L2 is the log-likelihood ratio chi-square statistic; df are the degrees of freedom; BIC is Bayesian information criterion (BIC= L2 - (df) log (N)), where N is the total number of cases (750 000); Δ is the index of dissimilarity, which indicates the proportion of cases misclassified by the model.

0.8

0.9

1

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

19761979

19821985

19881991

19941997

20002003

Czech Republic Hungary Slovakia

phi parameters (Model 5) quadratic fit (Model 5)

phi parameters constrained (Model 6) quadratic fit (Model 6)

quadratic trend (Model 7)

stre

ngt

h o

f ass

ocia

tion

(phi

pa

ram

ete

rs)

years

Figure 6. Trends in educational homogamy over years and by countries

Conclusions I

• Trends in absolute educational homogamy are very similar in all analyzed countries.

• The lowest relative educational homogamy was in 1976 as well as in 2003 in the Czech Republic, higher relative educational homogamy was in Hungary and the highest relative educational homogamy was in Slovakia

• From the time point of view we can conclude that the trend in all analyzed countries is the same – this trend has the form of „U“

- from 1976 to the beginning of nineties relative educational homogamy is decreasing in all analyzed countries, during the first part of nineties the relative educational homogamy reaches its minimum in all countries and from the half of nineties relative educational homogamy is in strong increase (the Czech Republic and Slovakia) or in slight increase (Hungary)

Conclusions II• If we admit, that changes in relative educational homogamy indicate

„educational openness“, it means that educational inequalities is going to the same level, in which they were in the half of seventies of 20th century in all analyzed countries.

• Socialism (from 1976 to 1989) meant decreasing of educational inequalities, because educational homogamy was in decrease, but the transformation from socialism to capitalism in all analyzed countries means the change of this trend: educational inequalities are in increase in all former socialistic countries at the moment because we can see the increase of educational homogamy in marriage market in all former socialistic countries