TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Choi, Jeongwon
AU  - Kim, Jinyoung
        TI  - Sorting in the Marriage Market: A New Approach to Measuring Assortative Mating
        PY  - 2025/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17956
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17956
        AB  - This paper introduces a new framework for measuring the extent of positive assortative mating 
(PAM) in the marriage market by relaxing the standard assumption of dichotomous sorting 
levels. Conventional PAM measures treat marriage sorting as a binary outcome—either 
perfectly matched or not—thereby failing to capture degrees of similarity between partner 
types. We propose a continuous measure of sorting based on trait similarity, where individuals 
are hypothesized to select mates according to the relative closeness of traits, which influences 
marital payoffs. Trait similarity is quantified using multidimensional attribute data and 
incorporated into a similarity-weighted matching matrix. We adapt conventional PAM 
indices—including the normalized trace, aggregate likelihood ratio, and perfect-random 
normalization—to this similarity-weighted framework. Applying our method to U.S. data on 
occupational, religious, and educational matching, we uncover patterns in assortative mating 
that are obscured under traditional approaches.
        KW  - trait attributes
KW  - partner trait
KW  - assortative mating
KW  - measure for positive assortative mating
        ER  -