Women’s Higher Education, Assortative Mating, and Empowerment: Long-Term Evidence from College Enrollment Expansion in South Korea

This study examines the impact of higher education on women’s bargaining power in the household in South Korea. Utilising the nationwide college expansion programs in South Korea in 1979 and 1981 as a natural experiment, this study uses 6181 married women born between 1943 and 1976 and adopts the birth cohort as an instrumental variable to identify women that benefitted from the programs. The results show that more years of schooling increased women’s property ownership and decision-making power at home, which is further explained by three channels. The first channel, related to women’s economic resources, indicates that education increased women’s likelihood of being employed, having a white-collar job, absolute income, and age at marriage. However, it did not increase women’s relative income compared to their husbands’. Second, consistent with the assortative mating theory, higher education encouraged women to marry a partner who has a prestigious job and is closer to their education level and age. Third, the channel of gender role attitudes revealed that more years of schooling led women to realize the need for financial independence from their spouses. These findings show how access to higher education for women improved gender equality in South Korean society.