Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/34849 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3448
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper examines the effects of education on intermarriage, and specifically whether the mechanisms through which education affects intermarriage differ by immigrant generation, age at arrival, and race. We consider three main paths through which education affects marriage choice. First, educated people may be better able to adapt to different cultures making them more likely to marry outside of their ethnicity (cultural adaptability effect). Second, because the educated are less likely to reside in ethnic enclaves, meeting potential spouses of the same ethnicity may be difficult (enclave effect). Lastly, if spouse-searchers value similarities in education as well as similarities in ethnicity, then the effect of education will depend on the availability of same-ethnicity potential spouses with a similar level of education (assortative matching effect). Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, we find that controlling for the enclave effect, there is empirical evidence for both the cultural adaptability and assortative matching effects. Our estimates also suggest that assortative matching is relatively more important for the native born rather than the foreign born, for the foreign born that arrived young rather than old, and for Asians rather than Hispanics. We provide additional evidence suggestive of our hypotheses and discuss policy implications.
Subjects: 
Ethnic intermarriage
education
immigration
JEL: 
J12
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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