The Effect Of Marital Educational Matching On Individual Income

The relationship between income and individual education level has always been the focus in educational economics area.Several studies have shown that there exists an educational economy benefit with the increase in the year of education.That Education can enhance individual's income also known as the spillover effect of education.With the development of China's market economy system,education plays an important role in the distribution of income.The traditional"perfect match" marriage view,a type of marriage pattern based on family status,turned into paying more attention to spouse's personal characteristic like education level.There are two main questions in this paper:whether marriage will affect personal income?And how does personal education level affect the income level of spouse——marital selection effect or premium effect?By analyzing the relationship between income and spouse's education level,we intend to offer some theoretical support in optimizing the return of education to family income,and in reasonable planning investment in education.In current,most of the studies on the relationship between education and income focus on the calculation of the return rate of education.The research on marriage education matching mainly focuses on the characteristics and trend of marriage pattern.The study of the relationship between income and education marriage matching is less.This article selects the spouse sample from 2012 CFPS(China Family Panel Studies).These samples covering 25 provinces in China,eliminating Hainan,Hongkong,Macao,Taiwan,Xinjiang,and Tibet,which enhance the credibility of empirical analysis.Scholars' research on marital educational matching mainly focuses on the characteristics and trend of marriage pattern.There are fewer studies on the relationship between marital educational matching and personal income.Based on the perspective of individual's income,this paper investigates the effect of marital educational matching on individual income empirically.This paper divides education mating into three categories,"upward gradient marriage","downward gradient marriage" and "homogeneous marriage".The empirical findings indicate that"homogeneous marrriage" has no significant income effects on both men and women;"upward gradient marriage" has a significant and positive income effects on both men and women.However,"downward gradient marriage" has a significant negative income effect on men.These results confirm the spillover effects of education.Furthermore,the empirical results show that women will pay more opportunity costs when they chose" downward gradient marriage".