Replication package for:
Wang, Yanwen. 2025. “Educational Sorting in Unions and Subjective Well-Being in Europe: Gender Differences and Contextual Variations.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 96:101020. doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101020.
This study examines the associations between educational sorting—the intra-couple difference in education—and subjective well-being of heterosexual partners in Europe, independent of each partner’s education status. It extends the literature by exploring whether and how these associations vary across societies and normative climates. A sample of 180,733 respondents in marriage or cohabitation from 29 countries was selected from Rounds 1-10 (2002-2020) of the European Social Survey and analyzed using the Diagonal Mobility Models. Pooled analyses show that net of status effects, hypergamy (women partnering with more educated men) was associated with lower well-being for both genders, and men were more satisfied with life in hypogamous relationships (partnering with more educated women). These patterns varied across societies, illustrated, for instance, by a hypergamy advantage among men in Southern Europe and women in the Baltic states. Notably, women’s well-being disadvantage in hypergamy was exacerbated in contexts where such partnerships were less normative. These findings provide unique insights into the diverse well-being outcomes of assortative mating between genders and across societies, shaped, in part, by societal norms.
Keywords: assortative mating, educational sorting, subjective well-being, gender, Europe
To replicate the research, please follow these steps:
- Download data from the European Social Survey.
- Clean the data using Julia scripts under the folder scripts_tidy.
- Select the sample and replicate the main analyses using scripts under the folder scripts_analysis.
- Conduct auxiliary analyses using scripts under the folder scripts_auxiliary.