WINNIPEG, Manitoba, June 28 (UPI) -- Data analysis disputes the notion that college-educated couples migrate to U.S. metropolitan areas, say U.S. and Canadian researchers.
Fifty percent of "power couples" -- wherein both partners are college-educated -- live in metropolitan areas, but not because they moved there.
The study, published in the Journal of Labor Economics, argues that college-educated singles are more likely to move to big cities where they meet, date, marry and sometimes divorce other college-educated people. In other words, power couples do not move to big cities intact -- they are formed there.
"We find that power couples are not more likely to migrate to the largest metropolitan areas and are no less likely than other couples to migrate from such areas once they are there," the study said.
Janice Compton, of the University of Manitoba, and Robert A. Pollak, of Washington University, in St. Louis, used data from a large-scale statistical study of 4,800 families to analyze men ages 25 to 39 and women ages 23 to 37, including all married couples who live together and all unmarried heterosexual couples who have lived together for at least one year.
