ABSTRACT Research on socioeconomic homogamy was developed by stratification researchers who used marriage patterns to describe how open stratification systems are. In cross-national studies primary concern on marriage homogamy lies in examination of commonality and differences in their social structures. Following large-scale international studies we use the European Social Survey data 2004–2005 to examine the association between spouses’ educational levels. Loglinear analysis is applied to assess: (i) degree of association between education of spouses, (ii) patterns of barriers to intermarriage, (iii) variation in homogamy for partners with the same education for primary, uncompleted secondary, secondary, and university levels, and (iv) asymmetry in marriage patterns between women and men. The strongest association between spouses’ education is in Slovakia, followed by Czech Republic, Norway, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, and Slowenia, whereas the lowest association displays in Luxembourg, France, Sweden, Finland and Belgium. In addition to previous research we found inter-country variation in division into post-communist and Western democracies. In line with all earlier studies we found – upon examination of parameters estimated for educational levels – a uniform tendency according to which the difficulties of intermarriage varies monotonically with differences between educational level of spouses. The tendency toward in-marriage proved to be the strongest in the lowest educational levels – such pattern takes place in the 14 countries. Finally, our analysis substantiated presence of net tendency to ‘marry up’ higher educated husbands by women but we find that it is by no means an universal rule and in seven, out of 22 countries examined, it is men who ‘marry up’ higher educated wives.

The main question raised here is whether new rules of income distribution in Eastern Europe resemble opportunity structures in developed market economies. Implicit in theory of modernisation is hypothesis that returns to education stood at the highest in most developed capitalist societies. In the long-standing debate on the transition of post-communist societies to the market economy nobody compared Eastern European countries with Western nations in the first decade of transition to capitalist system. In what follows I attempt to fill this gap. I focused on direct comparison of effect of education on incomes in a number of countries representing both capitalist and post communist societies. Data come from International Social Survey Program 1996 and 1999. The analysis provides evidence that in the end of the 1990s economic benefits to education were still less in countries undergoing transition than in capitalist societies. However such knowledge provides only guidelines for understanding the most interesting question: to what extent post communist societies approached market-based patterns distribution of incomes. Although the analysis went beyond former studies, it displays only static picture. Due to lack of comparative cross-systemic data, on education returns, going back to 1980s, one has to concede that we will never find unequivocal empirical arguments which prove that effect of education under the planned economy was really lower. Contrary to most theories, one cannot exclude that this association might have been higher or the same as in the Western societies at the time.