MORE OR LESS EDUCATIONAL HOMOGAMY? A TEST OF DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF MODERNIZATION THEORY USING CROSS-TEMPORAL EVIDENCE FOR 60 COUNTRIES.

This article presents a reply by the authors to a commentary on their study, Educational Homogamy in 65 Countries: An Explanation of differences in Openness Using Country-Level Explanatory Variables, published in the 1998 issue of the American Sociological Review. This study presents new empirical evidence on trends in educational homogamy in 610 countries. Regarding the Confucian countries, it has been found that these countries to be among the countries with the highest levels of educational homogamy, even when South Korea is left out of the analysis. With respect to the strength and direction of the trends within the countries, the picture is rather complex. Averaged over the countries, educational homogamy decreased by about 2.5 percent in the period under study. This finding seems consistent with the general openness hypothesis. However, upon closer examination of trends in individual countries, the strength and direction of the trends differ considerably from one country to another. An important finding is that trends in educational homogamy within countries depend not only on the average level of modernization but also on their pace of modernization. The decrease in educational homogamy proved to be stronger in rapidly modernizing ones.