"Marrying-up" usually refers to marrying above your economic class, often improving one's social mobility¹ in the process. And while of course men have also married up, it's been historically more common for women to do so.

“攀高枝”通常指与一个比你经济阶层高的人结婚，这个过程通常会提升一个人的社会阶层。男性当然也会“攀高枝”。历史上，女性“攀高枝”更常见。

More men are marrying up today in part because there are more highly educated women now than there were a few decades ago, according to the study findings.

据研究表明，越来越多的男性正在“攀高枝”，一部分原因是，相比几十年前，受高等教育的女性更多。

As a result, "women are more likely to get married to a less-educated man," ChangHwan Kim, PhD, the study's lead author and an associate professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, said in the press release.

堪萨斯大学社会学副教授、研究首席作者金昌焕博士在新闻稿中表示，这样的结果就是，“女性更有可能嫁给受教育层次低的男性”。

To come to this conclusion, Kim and his study co-author Arthur Sakamoto, PhD, a professor of sociology at Texas A&M University, looked at gender-specific changes in income and marriage from hundreds of thousands of 35 to 44-year-olds using data from the U.S. Census² from 1990 to 2000 and the American Community Survey from 2009 to 2011.

为了得出这个结论，金博士和他的研究的合著者--德州农工大学社会学教授亚瑟·坂本博士，利用1990年到2000年间美国人口普查、以及2009年到2011年间美国社区调查针对35岁至44岁的成千上万人数据，研究了收入和婚姻的性别变化。

To measure "gender-specific changes," the researchers looked at how much return people got on their education in terms of their family's income.

为了测量“性别变化”，研究员研究了就家庭收入而言，教育的回报率。

"Previously³, women received more total financial return to education than men, because their return in the marriage market was high," Kim said in the press release. "But because of gains in education and employment opportunities, that advantage has deteriorated⁴ over time," he added.

金在新闻稿中指出：“在以前，女性比起男性能获得更多经济上的教育回报，因为女性能在婚姻市场上获得高教育回报。”他补充道：“但是由于教育和就业机会的增加，这种优势已经随着时间消失了。”

During the time period the researchers studied, they found that while women saw greater growth in their personal earnings⁵ compared to men, their "net advantage of being female in terms of family-standard-of-living decreased approximately 13 percent."

在研究人员进行研究的这一期间，尽管相比男性，女性的个人收入增长更快，但她们“作为女性的家庭生活标准净收益下降了大约13%。”

I asked Kim what a "net advantage of being female" meant over email and he clarified that "if a high-school educated woman marries a man with a BA degree, her equalized income (which gages the standard-of-living) can be higher than a high-school educated man who marries a woman with less than high school education."

在邮件中，我询问金什么叫“作为女性的净收益”，他解释道，“如果一个受到高中教育的女性嫁给了一个拥有本科学历的男性，她的净收入（用来衡量生活水平）将高于一个受到高中教育但是嫁给了一个没有高中学历男性的女性。”

"Until the 1990s, women's standard-of-living after controlling for education was higher than men's, but that is no longer the case in 2009-2011."

“直到20世纪90年代，女性的生活水平在受到教育后都比男性高，但是2009年-2011年已经不再是这样了。”

If you're not sure how to interpret the findings, you're not alone -- they're complicated. On the one hand, they paint a picture of an increasingly equitable⁶ education and employment landscape. Women bringing more to the family table, economically speaking, helps to shatter old school ideas about the "man of the house" being the "breadwinner" or "pants-wearer" of the family.

如果你不确定怎么阐释这些研究结果，那你并不孤独--这些结果很复杂。一方面，他们描绘出日益公平的教育和就业格局。从经济角度来说，女性为家庭创造了更多财富，这有助于粉碎关于男性是家庭主要经济来源的老观念。

But "in essence," as Kim told me via email, mens' "standard-of-living has improved substantially more than equally less-educated women thanks to their wives' higher salary than before."

但是，正如金通过电子邮件告诉我的那样，“从本质上来说，‘男性生活水平提高的幅度远远超过同样受教育程度较低的女性，这要归功于他们的妻子比以前更高的薪水”。

Kim added that "the marriage market is becoming increasingly important for men's economic well being." The upside is that can use this data to better understand how trends like "marrying up" will affect our culture.

金补充道：“婚姻市场正在变得对男性经济状况越来越重要。”这个结论的好处在于可以使用数据来更好的理解为什么像“攀高枝”这样的趋势会影响我们的文化。