Intramarital Status Differences Across Africa's Educational Expansion

Objective This paper documents how intra-marital differences in educational status vary across Africa's heterogeneous educational expansion, which has encompassed an enormous breadth of educational opportunities over the past 50 years. Background Educational expansion influences intra-marital status differences both by altering the educational composition of men and women and by reconfiguring the social conventions associated with a given educational context. Status differentials between marital partners can influence spousal wellbeing and, in the aggregate, determine the extent to which marriage provides a pathway to upward social mobility. Method Using Demographic and Health Survey data representing 32 sub-Saharan African countries and 5 decades of birth cohorts, the paper examines the prevalence and propensity of educational pairings as a function of educational access (the percentage of a cohort who ever attended school) and wife's education level. Results Educational expansion created gendered changes in educational compositions of married individuals, which led to increased prevalence of hypergamy (wives who married "up") in most countries. Educational expansion has also led hypogamous marriages to become less of a social aberration: in lower-education contexts (but less so in higher-education contexts), conventions lead women to "marry down" at far lower rates than would be expected based on the sex-specific compositions of husbands and wives. Conclusion Educational attainment remains a central determinant of social positioning in African society. However, as schooling expands across the continent, social conventions regarding educational status are playing a weakening role in determining who marries whom.