How has assortative mating contributed to growing inequality?

Assortative mating is the process by which people of similar backgrounds, such as educational attainment or financial means, select a partner. This pattern has been compounded by growing disparities in the earnings of those with high and low levels of education. The authors illustrate this with some examples.

Is mating an inequality?

It is clear to academics that people tend to marry spouses with similar levels of education. They also know that “assortative mating”, as the practice is called in the jargon, is exacerbating income inequality.

Why is assortative mating bad?

By contrast, negative assortative mating (where opposites attract and individuals prefer to mate with phenotypically different individuals) results in excess of heterozygotes. Population structure also causes departures from Hardy–Weinberg proportions.

What is educational assortative mating?

educational assortative mating is defined as men and women with the same level of education marrying more (less) frequently than what would be expected under a marriage pattern that is random in terms of education.

Why does sympatric speciation require assortative mating?

Positive assortative mating is a key element leading to reproductive isolation within a species, which in turn may result speciation in sympatry over time. Sympatric speciation is defined as the evolution of a new species without geographical isolation.

Does assortative mating affect allele frequencies?

Some types of assortative mating are also similar to inbreeding in that they do not change allele frequencies but do affect genotype frequencies. Many assortative mating models do change allele frequencies because the proportion of individuals in the matings differs from the proportion in the population.

Does assortative mating change allele frequency?

Many assortative mating models do change allele frequencies because the proportion of individuals in the matings differs from the proportion in the population.

What is the role of assortative mating in creating new species?

Evolutionary theory predicts that positive assortative mating-the tendency of similar individuals to mate with each other-plays a key role for speciation by generating reproductive isolation between diverging populations.

Does assortative mating cause evolution?

Like recombination, non-random mating can act as an ancillary process for natural selection to cause evolution to occur. Any departure from random mating upsets the equilibrium distribution of genotypes in a population. This will occur whether mate selection is positive or negative assortative.

What effect do assortative matings have on populations?

An excess of con- sanguineous mating has two consequences: (1) an increase in the average homozygosity; and (2) an increase in the total population variance. Assortative mating should give qualitatively similar results. Assortative mating may have either of two causes, or some combination of both.