Social Stratification of the Russian Society: the Case of the Marriage Networks

Due to the scientific literature societies are divided into status groups, which are differentiating from each other by the occupation prestige, earnings, education and the contribution to society and Russian society is not an exception. In this paper, I focus on the occupations in the marriage couples because the occupation is the most important and significant indicator of personal social status when marriage couples point to establishing and maintaining social order (i.e. homophily in the status groups and the distinction between them). I am making an attempt to understand the structure of marital networks and the way how they split into groups by any of the previously mentioned characteristics. The paper presents the results of study dedicated to marital networks in contemporary Russian society. Patterns of marriage formation process were analyzed, as well as its’ long-term effects on human life, focusing on occupation and earnings. Nationally representative longitudinal survey (RLMS) was used to extract marital networks of the last two decades. Social Network Analysis along with Regression Analysis were used in order to explore structure of these networks and to measure the influence of partners’ characteristics on each others’ future. Analysis showed high homophily among professional communities and proved initial hypothesis about strong clusterization of Russian society by marital ties.