Spouse selection among the children of European immigrants: a comparison of marriage cohorts in the 1960 census

"This article uses 1960 [U.S.] census data to describe patterns of spouse selection among the native-born children of European immigrants. The analysis builds on previous studies of ethnic intermarriage, but is new in that it focuses specifically on the second generation. In addition, it considers intermarriage as a multidimensional phenomenon and evaluates how the relative importance of national and educational boundaries in marriage choice has changed. Comparisons of synthetic marriage cohorts suggest that second generation European Americans marry increasingly into the native stock, they marry increasingly out of their national origin group, and the national boundaries that separate them have become weaker over time. At the same time, it is found that educational homogamy has increased across cohorts." This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America.     

HOMOGAMY AMONG DATING, COHABITING, AND MARRIED COUPLES

The winnowing hypothesis posits that transitions from dating to cohabiting to marital unions are marked by increasing selectivity in the mate selection or matching process. In this paper, we provide comparative estimates of educational, racial, and religious homogamy and heterogamy along a continuum of commitment: sexually intimate dating couples, cohabiting couples, and married couples. Log-linear models, fitted to cross-classified data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, provide only partial support for the winnowing hypothesis. On the one hand, homogamy with respect to race and religion increases slightly as relationships progress from dating to cohabitation to marriage. On the other hand, each relationship–dating, cohabiting, and married–is marked by substantial homogamy, at least for the traits considered here. And, in the absence of homogamy, each couple type reveals quite similar patterns of educational heterogamy or intermarriage, although upward mobility through partnering is less evident among cohabitors. Overall, however, the rather stringent sorting criteria that men and women use in selecting a marital partner, which manifests itself in marital homogamy, is also used in dating and cohabiting relationships.     

Structural and Individual Determinants of Outmarriage Among Chinese-, Filipino-, and Japanese-Americans in California*

This study combines structural factors of intergroup relations with personal assimilation factors to examine Asian American intermarriage in California, We conduct a multilevel logistic regression analysis of outmarriage among Chinese, Filipinos, and Japanese in 14 California metropolitan statistical areas with high con centrations of Asian Americans by using the 1980 Census Public-Use Microdata Sample. The results show that Asian intermarriage is affected by both assimilation and structural determinants. Some theoretically unexpected findings are discussed that hint at alternative interpretations.     

Mexican Americans’ Lucky Few and Baby Boom Cohorts: How Is Relative Cohort Size Related to the Likelihood of Being Out-of-Poverty?

Generational cohorts influence individuals’ economic life chances. Retrospective analysis has found that the “Lucky Few” generation had better life chances than previous generations. We focus on Mexican Americans in the United States and offer a prospective analysis to explore how relative cohort size plays a role in the odds of their being out-of-poverty. Using Public Use Microdata Sample files from 1990, 2000, and 2010, we test the hypothesis by comparing Early Baby Boom (those born between 1946 and 1955) and Late Baby Boom (those born between 1956 and 1965) cohorts to the Lucky Few (born between 1936 and 1945) cohort. Models predicting the odds of being out-of-poverty during the peak wage-earning years indicate that belonging to the Lucky Few cohort affords Mexican Americans no economic advantage. Our findings demonstrate that the relative cohort size hypothesis may not always be generalized to Mexican American minority samples.     

Hispanic intermarriage in New York City: new evidence from 1991

"This study [uses] 1991 marriage records from New York City [to examine] trends in marital assimilation among Puerto Ricans and the non-Puerto Rican Hispanic population. The prevalence of intermarriage varies among the six Hispanic national-origin groups. Changes in intermarriage patterns since 1975 are documented. Results show very high rates of intermarriage with non-Hispanics among Cubans, Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans. Considerable intermarriage among Hispanics of different national origins is characteristic of all Hispanics. Finally, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans have distinct patterns of intermarriage...."     

Educational assortative mating: a micro‐educational approach

This article presents a new way of analysing educational assortative mating patterns, using a detailed ‘micro‐educational’ classification capturing both hierarchical and horizontal forms of educational differentiation. Taking advantage of rich Danish population data, we apply log‐linear models that include four ways of measuring educational homogamy patterns: (a) by returns to education, (b) by macro‐education (five aggregated levels), (c) by field of study (16 categories), and (d) by a disaggregated micro‐educational classification, combining levels and fields of study (54 groups). Our results show declines in educational homogamy from 1984 to 2013, but the odds ratios of being educationally homogamous at the university college and university levels remain of substantial magnitude, by both the macro‐ and micro‐educational measures. The micro‐educational classification outperforms all other measures in explaining the associations in the homogamy tables. The income measure (‘returns to education’) does a particularly poor job of explaining homogamy patterns from 1984 to 2013.     

Trends in Asian American racial/ethnic intermarriage: a comparison of 1980 and 1990 census data

"In this paper, we use data from the 1990 [U.S.] census to compare patterns of Asian American intermarriage with those reported by Lee and Yamanaka (1990).... Our main findings show that: (i) the overall outmarriage rate has declined; (ii) Asian American inter-ethnic marriages (that is, marriages between two Asian Americans of different Asian ethnicities) have increased; and (iii) social distance, measured by an Index of Intermarriage Distance, between Asian Americans and other racial and ethnic groups has widened. We conclude by discussing some implications of the findings for the role of racial and ethnic intermarriage as an indicator of intergroup relations."     

Measures of Assimilation in the Marriage Market: Mexican Americans 1970–1990

In 1965 the United States rewrote its immigration laws, and immigration increased sharply as a result. The immigrants and the children of immigrants from the post‐1965 period are slowly becoming more influential in U.S. life; the largest of these groups are the Mexican immigrants and the Mexican Americans. The rapid growth of Hispanic and Asian populations in the United States has led to a renewed interest in the question of assimilation; that is, will the new groups assimilate, and if so how long will it take? Will they become part of White America? Will some groups assimilate into the Black‐dominated urban underclass (a process Portes called segmented assimilation)? Will some groups remain permanently separate and socially isolated? In this article, I examine the behavior of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in the U.S. marriage market, using census data from 1970, 1980, and 1990. The findings are that Mexican Americans are assimilating with non‐Hispanic Whites over time, and the evidence tends to reject the segmented assimilation hypothesis. The interplay between intermarriage and endogamy is studied with log linear models; some variations by geography and U.S. nativity are noted.     

The problem posed by immigrants married abroad on intermarriage research: the case of Asian Americans

"Cross-sectional and longitudinal variations in rates of intergroup marriage [in the United States] have often been used as indicators of assimilation for minority groups. This article demonstrates that both types of comparisons can give misleading results when census data are used for calculating intermarriage rates without restrictions. Census data include immigrants who married abroad (IMAs) in the enumeration. The inclusion of these individuals in the study of intermarriage inevitably biases the level of minority inmarriage upward, making cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of intermarriage rates for groups with different levels of IMAs inappropriate. Cumulation of IMAs also inflates the inmarriage rates of older cohorts, leading to a misimpression of increasing outmarriage among younger cohorts. These problems are illustrated for several Asian groups using 1980 Public Use Microdata Sample data for California. Alternative approaches for remedying the problem are proposed and their different implications for assimilation theory and research are discussed."     

Religious homogamy and voluntary childlessness in Canada

The aim of this study was to determine the influence of religious affiliation, religious homogamy, religiosity, and religious marriage on voluntary and temporary childlessness and to compare childlessness patterns among Canadian-born and foreign-born women. Data were obtained from the 1984 Canadian Fertility Survey of 2863 women aged 18-49 years who were married to their first husband or living in consensual unions. The sample included 216 childless women, of whom 98 were voluntarily childless and 91 were temporarily childless. Analysis performed with probit maximum likelihood techniques and bivariate forms revealed that homogamous Catholics were less likely to remain temporarily childless but more likely to be voluntarily childless than non-Catholics. Multivariate analysis found that age, marriage age, education, and husband's income were statistically significantly related to voluntary childlessness. The likelihood of childlessness was also influenced by young age, later marriage, higher education, employment, women with husbands with lower income, and women who attend church services less frequently. Religious homogamous marriage was unrelated to childlessness. Frequent church attendance decreased the odds of deciding not to have children. Neither Catholic homogamy nor non-Catholic homogamy had an important effect after interaction terms for both religiosity and homogamy were included. Childlessness among foreign-born women was significantly more likely among those whose husbands had lower income, nonreligious women, and non-Catholic women who married heterogamously. Canadian women's childlessness was significantly related to education, husband's income, religiosity, and non-Catholic homogamy.     

Patterns of Intermarriages and Cross‐Generational In‐Marriages among Native‐Born Asian Americans

This article examines patterns of post‐1965 native‐born Asian Americans’ intermarriages and cross‐generational in‐marriages using a combined sample of the 2001–2006 American Community Surveys from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. The analysis focuses on ethnic and gender differences in intermarriage and cross‐generational in‐marriage rates and patterns. About 55 percent of native‐born Asian Americans are found to be intermarried while another 23 percent are married to 1.5‐generation or first‐generation co‐ethnic immigrants. Thus only 22 percent of native‐born Asian Americans are married to co‐ethnic native‐born Asian Americans. As expected, there are significant ethnic and gender differences in intermarriage and cross‐generational in‐marriage rates and patterns. This study is significant because it is the first study that has examined intermarriage patterns among post‐1965 native‐born Asian Americans, the majority of whom are likely to be children of post‐1965 Asian immigrants, using the most recent Census data available. It is also significant for studies of the new second generation in general in that it is the first study to show patterns of cross‐generational in‐marriage among members of the new second generation.     

Modernization and religious intermarriage in the Republic of Ireland

There are strong theoretical reasons for hypothesizing that those sections of the population who are most exposed to modernization processes are more likely to marry outside their own religious group. We examine this for Catholic-Protestant intermarriage in the Republic of Ireland. We use a multivariate analysis on survey data to test the hypotheses that urban dwellers, persons of non-farming parents, persons with higher levels of education and the young are more likely to be religiously intermarried. While the odds of being in an intermarriage are greater for urban dwellers, this is in large part due to their being non-farmers. The farming effect is not necessarily related to religiosity. The odds of being in an intermarriage do not increase significantly for persons with third level education and this can be explained in terms of the marriage market for minority groups. It is shown that the historical context and the minority position of religious group should be taken into account in explanations which relate modernization to the pattern of religious intermarriage.     

Gender and Ethnic Differences in Marital Assimilation in the Early Twentieth Century1

Historical research on intermarriage has overlooked how distinctive patterns of ethnic settlement shape partner choice and assumed that the mate selection process operated the same way for men and women. This study utilizes a sample of youn married adults drawn from the 1910 Census IPUMS to examine 1) whether ethnic variation in partner choice was shaped by differences in group concentration and distribution and 2) if factors shaping outmarriage were gendered. About one fifth of young married Americans had spouses of a different ethnic background in 1910, though there was considerable ethnic variation in outmarriage propensities. Barriers to intermarriage fell at different rates, depending upon ethnic grou, sex, and region of settlement; they were weakest for first‐and seconl eneration English men. Structural factors such as group size operatef differently for men and women; while larger group representation increased men's odds of outmarriage to both native stock and other white ethnic wives, women from the ethnic groups with the largest presence were significantly more likely to wed fellow ethnics than the native stock. Ultimately, even if they resided in the same location, the marriage market operated in different ways for ethnic women and men in search of mates.     

Educational homogamy in Ireland and Britain: trends and patterns

This paper examines the pattern of educational homogamy in Ireland and Britain. Using contemporary data on recent marriages from the early 1970s through to the mid-1990s, we show that these two countries share a broadly similar pattern of educational homogamy, which is quasi-symmetric in character, with no tendency for women to marry up over and above that which can be attributed to the gender difference in educational attainment. In the 1970s, the strength of homogamy was much weaker in Ireland than in Britain. But we discern a clear inter-country difference in how the net strength of homogamy has changed over time. While it has declined in Britain since the 1970s, in Ireland the strength of homogamy has first increased and then levelled off. Our findings are inconsistent with the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic development and homogamy reported by Smits, Ultee and Lammers (1998) - an argument premised on secular change in the criteria of spouse selection. Instead, our results are better understood in terms of Mare's (1991) life course argument that homogamy is inversely related to the time-gap between school departure and first marriage.     

Patterns,Determinants, and Implications of Intermarriage Among Arab Americans

This study examines Arab American intermarriage using 1990 U.S. Census data. The results indicate high rates of intermarriage consistent with an assimilation perspective. Over 80% of U.S.‐born Arabs had non‐Arab spouses, implying a diminishing ethnic identification. Logistic regressions show that for both sexes, those with part Arab ancestry, the U.S. born, those with strong English‐language ability, and the highly educated were significantly more likely to out‐marry, as were Arabs of Lebanese ancestry. The cultural and structural assimilation of Arab Americans is facilitating intermarriage, with indicators of acculturation being the strongest predictors, especially for women. The article further discusses ethnic options for children of intermarried couples.     

Recovering Heritage and Homeland: Ethnic Revival Among Fourth‐Generation Japanese Americans

In recent years, fourth‐generation Japanese American youth have been attempting to recover their ethnic heritage and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. This ethnic revival is a response to their continued racialization as “Japanese,” which has caused them to become concerned about their overassimilation to American society in an era of multiculturalism where cultural heritage and homeland have come to be positively valued. As a result, they are studying Japanese, majoring in Asian studies, living in Japan as college exchange students, and participating in Japanese taiko drum ensembles in local ethnic communities. Although this return to ethnic roots is a more serious commitment than the symbolic ethnicity observed among white ethnics in the past, it indicates that ethnicity remains involuntary for racial minorities, even after four generations. The case of later‐generation Japanese Americans demonstrates that cultural assimilation does not preclude the continuation and active production of ethnic difference.     

Estimate of the Number of International Children in Japan, Based on Trends in Intermarriage

Abstract  This paper focuses on international children (that is, children whose parents have different nationalities) in Japanese society. Using statistics on intermarriage in Japan between 1965 and 1990, we project the numbers of such children from 1991 to 2000. The important findings are summarized below:
1. There were estimated 165,000 international children under the age of 21 in Japan as of 1991. The number will increase to 528,000 by the end of the century if the intermarriage rate continues to increase as it has recently, but this will still represent less than 2% of the Japanese population under 21.
2. By the year 2000 roughly 75% of these will be children of foreign mothers, due to the rapid increase in marriages between Japanese grooms and foreign brides.
3. The number of children with dual nationality continues to remain much lower in Japan than advanced countries in Europe, despite concern expressed when the Nationality Law was revised in 1985. The number of children born to international couples in Japan is surprisingly small with respect to the number of international marriages, so a dramatic increase is not likely.     

Sociological Perspectives on Japanese Manga in America

Japanese popular culture has, according to journalist Roland Kelts, “invaded” the United States in the 21st century, and in particular Japanese comics, known as manga, have successfully “conquered America,” according to Wired magazine. Within the publishing trade itself, the medium's cultural and commercial success became known as the “manga revolution” or the “manga boom.” Yet despite all of this excitable rhetoric, there has thus far been scant sociological research into the particularities of this emerging phenomenon, and what exists is widely dispersed across multiple humanities and social science disciplines. This essay therefore aims to unite this scattered literature and provide a comprehensive survey of sociological perspectives on Japanese manga in America. I identify and explore three main substantive trends in the scholarly discourse: (i) studies of gender and sexuality and the homoerotic manga genres known as boys' love or yaoi; (ii) intellectual property, copyright, and the global digital piracy of manga colloquially known as “scanlation”; and (iii) studies of cultural production and the political economy of the American manga industry. This essay concludes with a discussion of the limitations these perspectives have in common and suggests a more critical research program drawing upon an expanded theoretical toolkit.     

Intergenerational Relations as an Aspect of Assimilation: the Case of Japanese-Americans

The present research investigates the intergenerational living arrangements. interactions, and economic assistance of Japanese Americans. Compared to other groups in America, both first and second generation Japanese-Americans have a stronger desire to be geographically and emotionally close to each other. The preservation of this pattern is made possible by the aged parents'belief in the importance of instrumental self-sufficiency.