Recent theories of heterosexual marriage suggest that socic-economic status attributes of individuals, measured particularly in terms of education, influence partner selection. Recently Kalmijn (1993) argued his findings regarding black-white intermarriage support a status exchange argument, and that Whites who marry non-Whites swap their racial caste prestige to gain spouse 's socio-economic status prestige. Also, women have the traditional incentive to marry up in socio-economic status, while men do not, under the assumed conditions of traditional sex roles Kalmijn 1993). In other words, fewer white men should intermarry because they lack the incentive to do so (Kalmijn, 1993). In contrast to white women, white men who intermarry must be willing to put aside or reverse traditional sex roles by prioritizing socio-economic status gain (Kalmijn, 1993). For the study of couples involving white men, Kalmijn's status exchange argument implies that we should find in interracial couples that wives have greater socio-economic status than husbands, as a general pattern and also compared to same-race couples.

This study examined the patterns of interracial coupling of white men in the United States using data from the 1% sample of the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample. Logistic regression analyses showed that on average white men involved in interracial couples were more educated than white men who were coupled with white women, and intermarried white men tended to be relatively more educated than their partners across age groups. The findings indicate that intermarriages not only follow the traditional gender pattern of male-female educational difference but exaggerate, even in younger marriage cohorts that might be less oriented to traditional sex roles. The results challenge the ideas that interracial coupling requires educational homogamy or that interracial coupling necessitates a race for education status exchange, and disconfirm that white men who intermarry must be deficient relative to other white men or relative to their own partners.