National Council of Applied Economic Research
Mumbai: Is it true that people tend to marry within their profession or occupation? Data available from the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS-II) suggests so if we analyse marriages within and across broad occupation categories. For example among those female teachers who were married 19% were married to fellow teachers (CHART 1A) the highest among the 14 occupation categories we constructed. This pattern holds for male teachers too—14% of male teachers are married to fellow teachers (CHART 1B) more than any other group if we exclude housewives. In fact for all the male teachers whose spouses were not housewives 55% of them were married to a fellow teacher.