Educational Attainment and Timing of First Marriage in Canada: A Test of Competing Explanations

Laura Wright, University of Western Ontario

Literature on the timing of first marriage often focuses on differences by broad educational categories and finds that age at first marriage has been increasing, especially among the highly educated. However, little attention has been paid to the marriage patterns of individuals with mid-range educational attainment including trades certificates and community college diplomas. The greater variation in age at completion of education among this group provides a unique opportunity to disentangle the influence of age at completion of education from the influence of educational category per se on marriage timing. Using the 2011 Canadian GSS, I examine the association between level of education and marriage timing and variation in timing by educational attainment using discrete time event history models. The Canadian case is ideal because of the large proportion of the population with mid-range educational attainment relative to other countries, and the comparison it provides to American and European research.