Effect of online dating on assortative mating: evidence from South Korea

Online dating services have increased in popularity around the world, but a lack of quality data hinders our understanding of their role in family formation. This paper studies the effect of online dating services on marital sorting, using a novel dataset with verified information on people and their spouses. Estimates based on matching techniques suggest that, relative to other spouse search methods, online dating promotes marriages that exhibit weaker sorting along occupation and geographical proximity but stronger sorting along education and other demographic traits. Sensitivity analysis, including the Rosenbaum Bounds approach, suggests that online dating’s impact on marital sorting is robust to potential selection bias.