Assortative Mating, Inequality, and Rising Educational Mobility in Spain
General Economics
2025-12-30 v1 Economics
Abstract
We study the evolution of intergenerational educational mobility and related distributional statistics in Spain. Over recent decades, mobility has risen by one-third, coinciding with pronounced declines in inequality and assortative mating among the same cohorts. To explore these patterns, we examine regional correlates of mobility, using split-sample techniques. A key finding from both national and regional analyses is the close association between mobility and assortative mating: spousal sorting accounts for nearly half of the regional variation in intergenerational correlations and also appears to be a key mediator of the negative relationship between inequality and mobility documented in recent studies.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.22848,
title = {Assortative Mating, Inequality, and Rising Educational Mobility in Spain},
author = {Ricard Grebol and Margarita Machelett and Jan Stuhler and Ernesto Villanueva},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.22848},
year = {2025}
}