Socio-economic status, gender, and spouse’s earnings: affect of family background on matching

This paper uses individual level data (the Japanese General Social Surveys 2000-2003) to examine how socio-economic status influences own and spouse’s earnings. After controlling for own and spouse’s characteristics such as human capital and age, I found: (1) childhood economic condition considered as socio-economic status is not associated with own income for both males and females. (2) The better a female’s childhood economic condition was, the higher her husband’s income. On the other hand, a male’s childhood economic condition was not related to his wife’s income. This suggests that social stratification persists through marriage for females but not for males.