More Powerful Couples: Urban Residence Choice for Advanced Degree Holders Across Demographic Characteristics

Past studies of urbanization in the United States have found that college-educated (power) couples migrate to metropolitan areas at higher rates than both educated single persons and other couples with less education. A common explanation is that power couples receive disproportionately high co-location benefits from cities and therefore migrate to urban areas more than other groups. This study leverages the Public Use Microdata Sets to understand urban residence rates for couples between 2007 and 2022, with a focus on couples attaining degrees beyond the bachelor’s level. The data allows couples to be classified into nine different power status categories based on joint educational attainment, along with categories for their sexual orientation and racial composition. Results from fixed-effects logit models reinforce previous work showing that couples at the highest levels of educational attainment reside in urban areas at higher rates than their otherwise equal peers. Urban residence rates are even stronger for more advanced degree holders generally, though the effect is disproportionately higher for black and Asian couples, while it is disproportionately weaker for some same-sex couples. The added nuance of these results provides important insight into the relationship between urban residency, educational attainment, and demographic characteristics.