TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Neyt, Brecht
AU  - Vandenbulcke, Sarah
AU  - Baert, Stijn
        TI  - Education Level and Mating Success: Undercover on Tinder
        PY  - 2018/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 11933
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp11933
        AB  - In this study, we examine the impact of an individual’s education level on her/his mating success by means of a field experiment on the mobile dating app Tinder, using a sample of 3,600 profile evaluations. In line with previous studies from the field of evolutionary psychology, our results indicate a heterogeneous effect of education level by gender: while females strongly prefer a highly educated potential partner, we cannot accept this hypothesis for males. Additionally, in contrast with previous literature on partner choice in an offline context and on classic online dating websites, we do not find any evidence for educational assortative mating, i.e. preferring a partner with a similar education level, on mobile dating apps such as Tinder. We argue that this is due to our research design, which allows us to examine actual (instead of stated) mate preferences in a dating market without search frictions and social frictions.
        KW  - assortative mating
KW  - mating success
KW  - returns to education
KW  - dating apps
KW  - Tinder
        ER  -