Mapping couples: educational homogamy in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires

Homogamy refers to couples that share a common characteristic like social class, educational level, religion, etc.: the pattern of homogamy of a society is an indicator of its level of openness or closeness in terms of social relationships between groups. The aim of this paper is to analyze the territorial distribution of the homogamy pattern in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA). To achieve this, we map the homogamy pattern of this area with data from the 2010 National Census. Our main findings are that residential environments with the most structural deficiencies have the higher levels of homogamy (of low educational levels) while the residential environments inhabited by people of the higher socioeconomic levels also have high levels of homogamy (of higher education) located mainly in the northern corridor of the City of Buenos Aires and the first ring of its metropolitan area. Also, couples with higher education have a considerable level of residential segregation.