SEATTLE, March 29 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers said Monday that higher education is no longer considered a major hindrance to marriage and motherhood.
As recently as 1980, the more years of graduate school a woman had completed, the less likely she was to be married later in life, said researchers at the University of Washington. However, this difference is fast disappearing, said Elaina Rose, associate professor of economics and lead author.
"There used to be a marked tradeoff between higher education and marriage," Rose said, "but that is no longer the case."
To document the shrinkage in what Rose called the "success gap" during the 1980s and 1990s, she analyzed millions of census records and tracked the education and marriage status of Americans in the 40-44 age group. In 1980, a woman that age who had completed three years of graduate school was 14 percent less likely to be married than her counterpart with only a high school diploma. By 2000, however, the difference had dropped to 5 percent.
Rose also said although she found in the 1980 census a strong likelihood for women to marry better-educated men, that tendency evaporated over the next two decades.
