This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In the past 25 years, Switzerland has seen the steepest rise in the share of highly educated women across Europe. Between 1999 and 2024, the share of women aged 30 to 40 who hold a higher education degree increased from below 20% to over 60%.
Over the same period, the share of highly educated men increased much more moderately. How does the marriage market change when women are more highly educated on average but at the same time seek partners with the same or a higher level of education? Has it become more difficult for highly educated women to find a partner?
Researchers from the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich (UZH) have now investigated how marriage patterns have developed and their relationship with income in Switzerland between 1999 and 2024. For their study, they analyzed data from the Swiss Household Panel, a unique longitudinal social science survey. The work is published in the Swiss Journal of Sociology.
The study found no evidence of a marriage squeeze for highly educated women in Switzerland. Over the past 25 years, the likelihood of highly educated women aged 30 to 40 living in a partnership has remained consistently above 80%, with a slight upward trend. "This result came as a surprise to us.
We had expected a different trend," says lead author Marco Giesselmann from UZH. Women with tertiary education continue to prefer relationships with men who have the same level of education. "Our study demonstrates that men have been the ones primarily adapting to the changing educational composition." In 1999, only about one-quarter of highly educated men were in a relationship with a higher education graduate, whereas by 2024, educationally equal relationships had become their dominant partnership pattern.
Over time, men with a medium level of education were also increasingly likely to have highly educated partners—nearly four times as often in 2024 as in 1999. These developments have kept the marriage market for highly educated women in balance. In contrast, the relationship outlook for men with low levels of education may be declining: The likelihood that they live without a partner has nearly tripled since 1999.
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