Study 1: Online Dating is Shifting Educational Inequalities in Relationship and Marriage Formation in Germany
Digital technologies colonize a large part of our social lives, including the pursuit of a romantic partner. Despite recent inquiries into the social consequences of meeting online, and on the backdrop of growing educational gaps in marriage, what remains unclear is how the link between education and union formation varies in online versus offline meeting contexts. Drawing on Blau’s theory of social structure and Bourdieu’s insights on symbolic goods, this study assesses how online dating shapes union formation for different educational groups with reference to two transitions: 1) entry into a partnership, and 2) the transition to marriage. Based on 2008 – 2018 pairfam data on German adults, I select a sample of singles searching for a partner (N = 3,565), and a sample of already partnered respondents (N = 9,052). I then engage in a series of event-history analyses, including discrete and fixed effects logistic regression, and Fine-Gray competing risks models. The analyses also account for multiple sources of selection bias. Results revealed that highly educated women had a higher chance of finding a partner when searching online than only offline, whereas men and women with lower levels of education were less likely to transition into marriage if their relationship began online. The second finding was partly explained when accounting for homogamy, with two lower educated partners marrying less when meeting in virtual settings. This study suggests that Internet dating fosters an uneven distribution of opportunities for partnering and marriage, and highlights its role in the demography of union formation.
Invited talk and conference attendance
- Potarca, G. (2019). Meeting Online is Shifting Educational Inequalities in Union Formation, paper presented at the American Sociological Association (ASA) Conference, August 10 - 13, New York, USA.
- Potarca, G. (2019). Online Dating is Shifting Educational Inequalities in Relationship and Marriage Formation, invited talk part of Cycle de conférences publiques 2019-2020 « Digitalisation et « big data » : enjeux pour les sciences sociales », November 14, Geneva, Switzerland.
Outreach
In March 2020, the journal of the University of Geneva published an interview related to the project and its preliminary results.
Study 2: Does Online Dating Challenge Gendered Marital Practices? (in collaboration with Prof. Jennifer Hook, University of Southern California)
In certain contexts (e.g., U.S.), Internet dating has recently become the number one way of meeting partners. Social scientists have also started pointing out the changes facilitated by mate selection occurring online. So far unexplored, an anticipated social transformation is the challenging of gendered relationship practices. Online courtship might allow individuals, especially women, to subvert gendered dating scripts and normative constructions of intimate life. Within a space that allows for more fine-tuned choices, people could initiate partnerships that are more egalitarian, rejecting the family model in which female partners carry the load of domestic labor. Using panel data on married adults from Germany (N = 5,076), this study confirms that spouses who met online, especially if not well-educated, have a higher probability of engaging in an egalitarian division of household work. The effect is nevertheless seen for tasks that do not involve caring for children.
