Marital Sorting on Pre-Marital Preferences for Household Behavior

Abstract

We examine marital sorting using novel data from a marriage-matching platform that records both a dating-to-marriage pipeline and pre-marital attributes, including preferences for children and for the division of housework and childcare. Unlike census or post-marital surveys, characteristics are collected before matching, and objectively measurable attributes are verified using official documents, providing an ideal setting to study matching and sorting free from post-marital adjustment. Using a multidimensional matching framework across twelve attributes, we find assortative matching along all dimensions. Age is the most salient trait, while preferences for children are second--exceeding education--an economically important margin invisible in standard data. A low-dimensional factor representation shows that fertility preferences constitute a distinct sorting dimension. Exploiting the platform's dating-to-marriage pipeline, we show that sorting on fertility preferences emerges at later serious-relationship stages. A theoretical analysis suggests that the magnitude of sorting along this margin is consistent with the veto model of fertility decisions.