In the past 25 years, Switzerland has seen the steepest rise in the share of highly educated women across Europe. Between 1999 and 2024, the share of women aged 30 to 40 who hold a higher education degree increased from below 20% to over 60%. Over the same period, the share of highly educated men increased much more moderately. How does the marriage market change when women are more highly educated on average but at the same time seek partners with the same or a higher level of education? Has it become more difficult for highly educated women to find a partner?
Researchers from the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich (UZH) have now investigated how marriage patterns have developed and their relationship with income in Switzerland between 1999 and 2024. For their study, they analyzed data from the Swiss Household Panel, a unique longitudinal social science survey.
Mixed impact on partnering patterns
The study found no evidence of a marriage squeeze for highly educated women in Switzerland. Over the past 25 years, the likelihood of highly educated women aged 30 to 40 living in a partnership has remained consistently above 80%, with a slight upward trend. “This result came as a surprise to us. We had expected a different trend,” says lead author Marco Giesselmann from UZH. Women with tertiary education continue to prefer relationships with men who have the same level of education. “Our study demonstrates that men have been the ones primarily adapting to the changing educational composition.”
In 1999, only about one-quarter of highly educated men were in a relationship with a higher education graduate, whereas by 2024, educationally equal relationships had become their dominant partnership pattern. Over time, men with a medium level of education were also increasingly likely to have highly educated partners – nearly four times as often in 2024 as in 1999. These developments have keept the mating market of highly educated women in balance. In contrast, the relationship outlook for men with low levels of education may be declining: the likelihood that they live without a partner has nearly tripled since 1999. However, the share of men with low levels of education in the total population has been steadily declining for years.
Education levels converge, income disparities remain
At first glance, it appears that traditional partnership patterns – in which men have a higher level of education than their partners – may be declining. However, the study also found that in terms of annual income, traditional patterns persist. Traditional inequalities within couples are now less evident in educational attainment, but they persist in income.
Only 25% of men in the top income third have a partner who earns about the same as they do – even though a majority are now in a relationship with a highly educated partner. “Gender-based income disparities continue to reinforce traditional economically unequal partnership patterns,” says Giesselmann. Traditional differences in socio-economic status have not simply disappeared; they have, to some extent, merely shifted.
Implications beyond the marriage market
The findings also shed light on the debate on declining birth rates in Switzerland. According to the researchers, given the relative stability of partnership formation, the drop in birth rates has less to do with the marriage market than with institutional and cultural factors – for example, changing expectations around self-fulfillment, the challenge of balancing work and family life, the fact that starting a family is no longer a matter of course, and rising housing costs.
References
Giesselmann, M., Rost, K., Sager, P., Döhne, M., Rössel, J., Vantis, C. (2026), Female Education Expansion in Switzerland and Marriage Market Dynamics: Attrition, Adaptation or Masked Hypergamy? Swiss Journal of Sociology 52(3). DOI: 10.26034/cm.sjs.2026.8867
Contact
Marco Giesselmann
Department of Sociology
University of Zurich
+41 44 635 23 73
giesselmann@soziologie.uzh.ch