Is it Better to Intermarry? Immigration Background of Married Couples and Suicide Risk Among Native-Born and Migrant Persons in Sweden

Anna Oksuzyan (), Sven Drefahl, Jennifer Caputo and Siddartha Aradhya
Additional contact information
Anna Oksuzyan: Bielefeld University
Sven Drefahl: Stockholm University
Jennifer Caputo: University of Chicago
Siddartha Aradhya: Stockholm University

European Journal of Population, 2023, vol. 39, issue 1, No 8, 26 pages

Abstract: Abstract Marriage is protective against suicide across most populations, including for persons of different ethnicities and immigrant backgrounds. However, the well-being benefits of marriage are contingent upon marital characteristics—such as conflict and quality—that may vary across spousal dyads with different immigration backgrounds. Leveraging Swedish register data, we compare suicide mortality among married persons on the basis of their and their spouse’s immigration backgrounds. We find that relative to those in a native Swede-Swede union, Swedish men married to female immigrants and immigrant women married to native men are at higher risk of death by suicide, while immigrants of both genders who are married to someone from their birth country have a lower risk of suicide mortality. The findings support hypotheses about the strains that may be encountered by those who intermarry, as well as the potential selection of individuals into inter- and intra-ethnic marriages.

Keywords: Suicide; Immigrant; Intermarriage; Mental health register data; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-023-09650-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eurpop:v:39:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s10680-023-09650-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10680

DOI: 10.1007/s10680-023-09650-x

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Population is currently edited by Helga A.G. de Valk

More articles in European Journal of Population from Springer, European Association for Population Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().