The effects of educational assortative matching on job and marital satisfaction

This paper studies how the decision to attend university may affect job and marital satisfaction. We propose a theoretical model with educational assortative matching, where individuals differ in their ability and prefer to marry an educated spouse. Thus, individuals decide whether to attend university both for obtaining higher job satisfaction and for meeting educated partners. Job satisfaction is modelled to take into account the income level of the average educated individual as the reference type, toward which educated individuals compare themselves. We show that, provided that the cost of social comparison is not too strong, the average ability of educated individuals falls with assortative matching, since more low ability students are willing to attend university for marital reasons. The lower average ability ultimately raises job satisfaction because it reduces the income level of the reference type. Expected marital satisfaction also increases, as more educated individuals enter the marriage market.