The rich still marry the rich, says study
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Your support makes all the difference.IN JANE Austen's day, well-to-do families would visit London or Bath in the hope of finding the right kind of man for their daughters to marry. Nowadays the upper and middle classes do not parade their children's eligibility in quite such a deliberate way. But parents still use connections such as golf and tennis clubs to make sure their children marry well.
A study published today, based on interviews with 4,700 married adults, shows that people from richer backgrounds can expect to command higher-earning jobs themselves. They are likely to marry someone from a similar background and are unlikely to find spouses from the lower socio-economic classes. But, the sons and daughters of manual and unskilled workers have a greater chance of "upward mobility" into a higher earning occupation and are more likely to "marry up".
The explanation offered by Professor John Ermisch, who led the research, is the existence of a "marriage market" where wealthier parents "use social networks to retard downward mobility" of their children. But, he said, if children from poorer backgrounds went to university they met people from the middle classes and were more likely to move up.
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