Abstract

This paper studies the determinants and consequences of hypogamy — women "marrying down'' to partners with lower educational attainment. Using Danish administrative data from 1980 to 2018, we document that the share of hypogamous unions doubled from 15 to 30 percent, overtaking the traditional pattern of women marrying up; that the burden of singlehood migrated across the education distribution, from highly educated women in 1980 to low-educated men today; and that while hypogamous couples have always faced the highest divorce risk, their dissolution rates stayed flat as divorce among assortative and hypergamous unions converged upward. To interpret these patterns, we develop and estimate an equilibrium search model of the marriage market with endogenous divorce, household production, and couple-type-specific match quality. Preliminary estimates reveal a steadily declining penalty on women marrying down, and counterfactuals attribute the rise in hypogamy to this softening norm together with the expansion of women's education, with little role for wages or household technology. We conclude by examining what declining sorting norms imply for marital stability, intra-household allocations, and long-run gender inequality.