Marrying Up? Trends in Age and Education Gaps Among Married Couples in Indonesia

Abstract

Using Indonesian National Socioeconomic Surveys, this article outlines the trends in spousal differences in age and educational attainment from a sample of matched husband–wife data in the early 1980s and 2010. The spousal age gap has declined from 6.4 to 4.7 in the three decades. A trend in assortative mating is maintained as 50% of married couples have equal education levels in both 1982 and 2010. The proportion of women marrying someone of higher education is declining, and conversely, the proportion of women “marrying down” is rising. Higher level of wife’s education and increasing age at first marriage are found to be negatively associated with spousal age gap. Along with development, social change, and the recent accomplishment toward gender parity across all education levels in the country, changing patterns in such gaps are bound to transform gender relations and the power dynamics within Indonesian families.

Menikah adalah Ibadah: Peran Agama dalam Mengkonstruksi Pengalaman Melajang di Indonesia

“…Salah satu dampak nyata dari modernisasi adalah transformasi nilai-nilai budaya yang mengedepankan kesamaan gender. Prinsip kesetaraan gender dalam pendidikan dan industri terlihat dari meningkatnya partisipasi perempuan dalam menempuh pendidikan tinggi (Setyonaluri, Maghfirah, and Aryaputra, 2020), yang akhirnya membuka peluang bagi mereka untuk membangun karier dan berperan di luar peran tradisionalnya sebagai ibu rumah tangga (Utomo 2014). Di sisi lain, sebagian besar masyarakat Indonesia masih memandang penting bentuk pernikahan hipergami, di mana pernikahan dianggap ideal ketika status ekonomi dan sosial suami lebih tinggi daripada status istri (Himawan 2020a).…”

Trends and Patterns of Educational Homogamy in India: A Marriage Cohort Analysis

“…With improvement in overall literacy, the role of education in mate selection is expected to undergo significant changes in India as well. It is rightly pointed out by a recent study that, in order to highlight the changes in marriage patterns in Asia, it is equally important to examine who marries whom in terms of age, education, and other attributes in addition to timing of entry into marriage [5]. The study therefore examined educational homogamy in India for specific marriage cohorts on the assumption that socioeconomic changes in the country will have a distinct effect on an entire cohort and, hence, it will be easy to differentiate cohorts from one another.…”

Pacaran or Ta’aruf: Contesting Two Cultural Trends of Mate Selection in Indonesia

“…Educational homogamy has been rising as increasing educational attainment for women. Not only in terms of education, age gap of marriage among young people in Indonesia are becoming smaller (Utomo, 2014). The general trend that capture changing pattern of mate selection in Indonesia, as present also in many countries is a transition from arranged to self-choice relationship.…”