%0 Report
        %A Almar, Frederik
%A Friedrich, Benjamin
%A Reynoso, Ana
%A Schulz, Bastian
%A Vejlin, Rune Majlund
        %T Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality
        %D 2025
        %8 2025 Mar
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 17814
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17814
        %X This paper revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of “ambition types” that is based on starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with detailed educational programs. We find a substantial increase in assortative matching by educational ambition over time, and the marriage market explains more than 40% of increasing inequality since 1980. In contrast, sorting trends are flat with the commonly-used educational level categorization. We conclude that the mapping from education to types matters crucially for conclusions about how education-based marriage market sorting contributes to rising income inequality.
        %K education
%K marital sorting
%K inequality