Hypogamy

Hypogamy is a preference for marrying a spouse of lower social class, colloquially called marrying down. It is the antonym of hypergamy, which originally referred to marrying or dating someone of higher socioeconomic class and which today, especially in colloquial use and in evolutionary psychology, more commonly refers to partnering with someone of higher mate value. The related term hypergyny can be used to describe the practice of women marrying up, and hypergamy, hypogamy and hypergyny could each be considered special cases of mesalliance. This entry is the marriage system named by the hypogamy value of the descent-rule category, and it shares its cited article with Hypergamy, whose article defines it as the inverse.