Title : Marriage, Assortative Mating and Wealth Inequality*  

Abstract : We use population data on capital income and wealth holdings for Norway to measureasset positions and wealth returns before individuals marry and after the householdis formed. These data allow us to establish a number of novel facts. First, individuals sort on personal wealth rather than parents’ wealth. Assortative mating on ownwealth dominates, and in fact renders assortative mating on parental wealth statistically insignificant. Second, people match also on their personal returns to wealthand assortative mating on returns is as strong as that on wealth. Third, post-marriagereturns on family wealth are largely explained by the return of the spouse with thehighest pre-marriage return. This suggests that family wealth is largely managed bythe spouse with the highest potential to grow it. This is particularly true for householdsat the top of the wealth distribution at marriage, providing a microfoundation for thescale dependence in wealth returns documented in several empirical papers. Fourth,marriage lowers the heterogeneity in returns as well as the degree of wealth inequalityrelative to the counterfactual case of no marriages. We use a simple analytical exampleto illustrate how the inequality attenuating role of marriage is affected by assortative mating on wealth and returns and wealth management task allocation betweenspouses.