The Hierarchy of Partner Preferences

The reasons behind changes in assortative mating remain difficult to understand. Using the text from matrimonial ads, we assemble a novel dataset to describe the evolution of partner preferences over time and space. Analyzing ads published in Canada, France and India between 1950 and 1995, we show that stated preferences for economic criteria have fallen sharply in favour of personality traits in the two Western countries while they remain the most prevalent in India. Using ads covering various regions from the US and Canada in 1995, we show that personality traits are consistently more demanded than economic criteria. We provide evidence that these results are unlikely to be driven by the composition effects over time, choice of newspaper outlets, role of parents or changing social norms. We show that the changes over time are particularly strong for women and accompany narrowing gender gaps in labor force participation in Western countries. We argue that these evolution reflect a hierarchy of partner preferences and discuss the implications for understanding the evolution of assortative mating over time