Abstract

This paper studies the consequences of educational expansion on marital sorting and intergenerational mobility. We first formulate a simple skill and education model to explain how better access to higher education leads to stronger assorta- tive mating on skills of parents and a more polarized skill and earnings distribution of children. Using Swedish registry data, we provide evidence that more skilled students increasingly enrolled in college and ended up with more skilled part- ners. Finally, we use an instrumental variable strategy to provide causal evidence on the impact of college education on marital skill sorting and intergenerational skill transmission. Exploiting college openings in the 60s and 70s as an exoge- nous source of spatial variation in college access, we find that better access makes college-educated women more likely to marry more skilled husbands and have more skilled children. All of these findings are consistent with the view that ris- ing earnings inequality is, at least in part, supply driven by rising skill inequality.