Educational Assortative Repartnering after Divorce: A Competing Risks Analysis Using a Large Survey in Flanders (Belgium)

Lindsay Theunis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Jan Van Bavel, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Higher-order unions are playing an increasingly important part in family life. Still, even if there is a large literature on educational assortative mating in first unions, similar research on matching in higher order unions is scarce. Research about educational assortative mating patterns gives insight into factors of attractiveness on the remarriage market and is relevant for understanding and predicting the reproduction, and maybe reinforcement, of social inequality after divorce. Using data from 3106 repartnered men and women in Flanders (Belgium), we examine if higher order unions are more or less homogamous than first marriages and how the patterns observed among first marriages influence the ones in higher-order unions. Our first results, based on competing risks event history models, indicate that people tend to reproduce the pattern observed for their first marriage in their higher order unions. We do not find evidence of higher-order unions being “more conservative” than first marriages.