Ethnic Intermarriage among Immigrants: Human Capital and Assortative Mating

Barry Chiswick and Christina Houseworth

No 2010:8, SULCIS Working Papers from Stockholm University, Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS

Abstract: This paper analyzes the determinants of interethnic marriages by immigrants in the United States. The dependent variable is intermarriage across ethnic groups (on the basis of ancestry and country of birth) and the inclusion of the explanatory variables is justified by a simple rational choice economic model. A binomial logistic regression is estimated using data from the 1980 US Census, the last Census where post-migration marriages can be identified. Results show that the probability of intermarriage increases the longer a migrant resides in the U.S. and the younger the age at arrival. Both relationships can be attributable to the accumulation of US-specific human capital and an erosion of ethnic-specific human capital. Inter-ethnic marriages are more likely between individuals with similar education levels, providing evidence of positive assortative mating by education for immigrants. The construction of the availability ratio for potential spouses from one’s own group and group size using data from several Censuses provides a more accurate measure of the marriage market. Intermarriage is lower the greater the availability ratio and the larger the size of one’s own group. Linguistic distance of the immigrant’s mother tongue from English indirectly measures the effect of English language ability at arrival and is found to be a significant negative predictor of intermarriage. Those who report multiple ancestries and who were previously married are more likely to intermarry.

Keywords: Immigrants; Marriage; Ethnicity/Ancestry; Country of Birth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J12 J15 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2010-07-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Chiswick, Barry R. and Christina A. Houseworth, 'Ethnic Intermarriage among Immigrants: Human Capital and Assortative Mating' in Review of Economics of the Household, 2011, pages 149-180.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.su.se/content/1/c6/01/18/05/SULCIS_WP2010_8.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://www.su.se/content/1/c6/01/18/05/SULCIS_WP2010_8.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.su.se/content/1/c6/01/18/05/SULCIS_WP2010_8.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ethnic intermarriage among immigrants: human capital and assortative mating (2011)
Working Paper: Ethnic Intermarriage among Immigrants: Human Capital and Assortative Mating (2008)
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:hhs:sulcis:2010_008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SULCIS Working Papers from Stockholm University, Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eskil Wadensjö ().