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What Causes What
MECHANISM

Educational attainment → Educational homogamy

Education sorts the rooms where people meet. Homogamy is mostly a market-design fact.

Observational · High confidence

Supported by an experiment or a tightly identified design. Still read the caveats.

Mechanism

Universities, firms, and cities stratify by credential. Once the meeting technology is stratified, matching on education is the default even if preferences were random. Fisman's intelligence/ambition weights sit on top of that meeting technology.

Caveats

Preferences and markets are entangled. We mark this causal_direct because the meeting-technology path is sufficient; we do not claim a deep preference shock from a diploma.

Effect

qualitative. People meet and match in education-sorted markets. This is one of the least mystical arrows in the atlas.

Nodes

Socioeconomic statusEducational attainmentPsychology & behaviorEducational homogamy

Named confounders

Cite this page

What Causes What. “Educational attainment → Educational homogamy.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-education-homogamy (atlas updated 2026-08-31).

https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-education-homogamy

Papers