Census Shows Some College Majors Are More Likely to Marry Each Other
Opposites are not the only ones that attract.
Priceonomics reports.
What College Majors Are Most Likely to Marry Each Other?
An old piece of wisdom in romance is that opposites attract. Perhaps it’s true in some ways, but when it comes to college majors, we found more evidence that many Americans just want to date themselves.
As part of the US Census, Americans are asked about their marital status, as well as their college major if they have an undergraduate degree. We analyzed US Census data and found that Americans marry people within their own major at an usually high rate. Looking at the 50 most common college majors, over 10% of married partners that both have college degrees had the same major. This number is as high as 21% for certain majors.
The data also shows that when it comes to love, people who are in an extreme gender minority in their field of study — like male nurses and female engineers — are the most likely to marry somebody in their major.
According to the 2012 American Community Survey, conducted by the US Census Bureau, approximately 28% of all married American couples over the age of 22 had both graduated from college. It is important to note that the 2012 individual level Census data did not recognize same-sex marriage. From the 2013 Census onwards, which is not yet available, the Census will report on same-sex couples.
For the 50 most common majors, the table below shows the rate at which people chose to marry others in that field for two degree couples.
Comments
So we should care about this because? The gov has no business collecting this info. The ACS gives the receiver 90 days of gov harassment to collect info that the gov has no business collecting and it is given to people who have no capacity to draw conclusions from any of it. I tossed mine survey in the shredder and ignored all the busy body gov employees who came to my door. I suggest others do the same.