ABSTRACT This study examines within- and cross-country trends and differences in marital sorting by education in Europe. Unlike previous research on assortative mating, our study focuses on the outcomes of the partner search process. We investigate how variations in (a) structural opportunities (educational composition of potential partners) and (b) assortative mating (non-random matching by education) have shaped trends and differences in educational sorting outcomes. Using vital statistics data on all marriages contracted from 2000 to 2020 in Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Italy, we decompose trends and differences in educational sorting outcomes into these two components. Within countries, trends in educational homogamy and hypogamy have been stable or increasing while hypergamy has declined. However, the drivers of these trends varied across countries. For example, in Sweden, shifts in assortative mating and structural opportunities led to more marriages between equally educated spouses, while in Italy, the rise in homogamy stems solely from changes in assortative mating. Within each year, homogamy and heterogamy levels varied between countries. Our findings demonstrate that these cross-country differences can be primarily attributed to variations in assortative mating rather than in opportunity structures. This study adds to recent research studying the structural causes of trends in sorting outcomes.

ABSTRACT In today's increasingly diverse societies, a key question is how to foster the structural integration of immigrants and their descendants. While research indicates that migrant educational underachievement is a serious issue, relatively little is known about achievement gaps at younger ages and in relatively new immigration countries. The current study sets out to estimate the size of disparities by migration background at age five (i.e. when they start school) and explores the causes of these gaps. It does so in a context that offers a compelling but under-researched case: the Republic of Ireland. It draws on the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) data, a national longitudinal study of children in Ireland. The results suggest that some disparities by migration background already existed at the start of primary school, but also that gaps were limited to verbal skills and differed widely across groups. Moreover, social background only played a relatively minor role in explaining the differences, whereas the child's first language was a powerful predictor of disadvantages by migration background in verbal skills.