Socio-economic status, gender, and spouse’s earnings: affect of family background on matching.

Abstract

This paper uses individual level data (the Japanese General Social Surveys 2000-2003) to examine how socio-economic status influences own and spouse’s earnings. After controlling for own and spouse’s characteristics such as human capital and age, I found: (1) childhood economic condition considered as socio-economic status is not associated with own income for both males and females. (2) The better a female’s childhood economic condition was, the higher her husband’s income. On the other hand, a male’s childhood economic condition was not related to his wife’s income. This suggests that social stratification persists through marriage for females but not for males.Status, identity of genders, spouse’s income, marriage market