Assortative Marriage and Geographic Sorting

Abstract: Between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. experienced a significant rise in geographic sorting and educational homogamy, with college graduates increasingly concentrating in high-skill cities and marrying similarly educated spouses. We develop and estimate a spatial equilibrium model with local labor, housing, and marriage markets, incorporating a marriage matching framework with transferable utility. Using the model, we estimate trends in assortative preferences, quantify the interplay between marital and geographic sorting, and assess their combined impact on household inequality. Welfare analyses show that after accounting for marriage, the college well-being gap grew substantially more than the college wage gap.