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Hypergamy (colloquially referred to as " dating up" or " marrying up") is a term used in social science for the act or practice of a person dating or marrying a spouse of higher social status than themselves.
The antonym " hypogamy" refers to the inverse: marriage a person of lower social class or status (colloquially " marrying down").
The term hypergyny can also be used to describe the overall practice of women marrying up, since the men would be marrying down.
Concepts such as hypergamy, hypogamy, and hypergyny could be considered as special cases of mésalliance.
The observed gender cliff in the distribution of women's share to the household income at 50% can be explained by income hypergamy preferences by both men and women, together with gender pay gap.
One study found that women are more selective in their choice of marriage partners than are men.
A study done by the University of Minnesota in 2017 found that females generally prefer dominant males as mates. Research conducted throughout the world strongly supports the position that women prefer marriage with partners who are culturally successful or have high potential to become culturally successful. The most extensive of these studies included 10,000 people in 37 cultures across six continents and five islands. Women rated "good financial prospect" higher than men did in all cultures. In 29 samples, the "ambition and industriousness" of a prospective mate were more important for women than for men. Meta-analysis of research published from 1965 to 1986 revealed the same sex difference (Feingold, 1992). Across studies, 3 out of 4 women rated socioeconomic status as more important in a prospective marriage partner than did the average man.
A 2012 analysis of a survey of 8,953 people in 37 countries, which found that the more gender-equal a country, the likelier male and female respondents were to report seeking the same qualities in each other rather than different ones.
An empirical study examined the mate preferences of subscribers to an online dating service in Israel that had a highly skewed sex ratio (646 men for 1,000 women). Despite this skewed sex ratio, they found that "On education and socioeconomic status, women on average express greater hypergamic selectivity; they prefer mates who are superior to them in these traits... while men express a desire for an analogue of hypergamy based on physical attractiveness; they desire a mate who ranks higher on the physical attractiveness scale than they themselves do."
One study did not find a statistical difference in the number of women or men "marrying-up" in a sample of 1,109 first-time married couples in the United States.
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