ASSORTATIVE MATING AND TURKISH MARRIAGE MARKET

The degree of assortative mating shows the degree of similarity between couples. For instance, couples have similar age, weight, height or income. Economists usually investigate the income relationship. In addition, in marriage market the competition causes to have similar characteristics for spouses. Many papers try to calculate earnings correlations between husbands and wives. This paper tries to calculate the earnings correlations for Turkey and consider the effect of the sample selection. Our results show that there is a weak positive assortative mating in Turkey. It means that the correlation between couples' earnings is not high and the bias from the selection is small. Even though this result contradicts with the theoretical works, it is similar with empirical studies. In addition, we look at the assortative mating coefficients in different regions in Turkey. Mediterranean region has the biggest correlation coefficient whileBlack sea has a coefficient close to zero.