Group size and secular endogamy among the religiously unaffiliated in Canada

High religious intermarriage among the religiously unaffiliated is usually interpreted as evidence of religion's minor importance for this group. Between 1981 and 2011, religious intermarriage among the unaffiliated in Canada declined from 38 percent to 21 percent, while the unaffiliated population tripled from 7 percent to 23 percent. This paper examines the role of demographic factors such as increased group size in decreased religious intermarriage among the unaffiliated. Using census and survey data, we estimate probit models of religious intermarriage for unaffiliated men and women. The models include individual and group-level characteristics. Results show that for both sexes, relative group size was the single largest contributor to decreased intermarriage. Increased group size allowed the expression of endogamous or within-group marital preferences among the unaffiliated. This secular endogamy, or preference for within-group marriage among the unaffiliated, represents an increasingly important form of religion-related marriage as the unaffiliated population grows.     

Ethnic intermarriage in longitudinal perspective: Testing structural and cultural explanations in the United States, 1880–2011

Focusing on macro-level processes, this article combines Decennial Census and Current Population Survey data to simultaneously test longitudinal and cross-sectional effects on ethnic intermarriage using structural and cultural explanations. Covering a 130 year period, the results of our multilevel analysis for 140 national-origin groups indicate that structural characteristics explain why some origin groups become more “open” over time while others remain relatively “closed”. Ethnic intermarriage is more likely to increase over time when the relative size of an immigrant group decreases, sex ratios grow more imbalanced, the origin group grows more diverse, the size of the third generation increases and social structural consolidation decreases. Cultural explanations also play a role suggesting that an origin group’s exogamous behavior in the past exerts long-term effects and exogamous practices increase over time when the prevalence of early marriage customs declines. For some of the discussed determinants of intermarriage, longitudinal and cross-sectional effects differ calling for a more careful theorizing and testing in terms of the level of analysis (e.g., longitudinal vs. cross-sectional).     

Marrying out: A boundary approach to understanding the marital integration of Asian Americans

For decades, studies of intermarriage have provided insights regarding the integration and assimilation of ethnic groups in the US. In this paper, marriage outcomes are analyzed to gain a better understanding of the integration of Asian Americans into American society. Instead of utilizing assimilation theories that focus on individual-level variables such as education and nativity, I extend two theoretical perspectives to develop a boundary approach which emphasizes the how structured contexts at ethnic and racial boundary levels influence intermarriage outcomes. This approach recognizes the layered character of ethnic boundaries and the salience of ethnic and racial boundaries for new immigrant groups. Multinomial logistic regression models are used to analyze 2000 US Census data. The results generally support the theoretical predictions, suggesting that demographic distributions and the ways in which groups are structured in relation to one another along racial and ethnic boundaries are important predictors of intermarriage.     

Ties on the fringes of identity

I use data on part-American Indian children in the 1990 Census 5% PUMS to assess my hypotheses that thick racial ties within the family constrain racial identification, and that structural aspects of the community (group size, inequality, and racial heterogeneity) affect racial identification when racial ties are thin within the family. American Indians present an interesting case study because their high levels of intermarriage and complex patterns of assimilation/identity retention for generations provide a varied group of people who could potentially identify their race as American Indian. Several hypotheses are supported by the data, signifying that racial identification among people with mixed-heritage is affected by the social world beyond individual psychology and racial ties within the family.     

American Indian intermarriage

An analysis of intermarriage patterns with data from the Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1980 Census shows that there is considerably more intermarriage between Indians and whites than between blacks and whites. Indians who live in traditional Indian areas are more likely to be endogamous than those who live in areas where Indians have not traditionally lived, though Indians in traditional Indian areas are also more likely to be married to whites than are Indians in nontraditional Indian areas (after adjustments are made to take into account the number of men and women in the different racial groups). The results also indicate that endogamous American Indians are poorer and less educated than any other type of couple, including endogamous black Americans.     

Boundary crossing in first marriage and remarriage

Owing to secular increases in divorce rates, remarriage has become a prevalent feature of American family life; yet, research about mate selection behavior in higher order marriages remains limited. Using log-linear methods to recent data from the 2008–2014 American Community Survey, we compare racial and ethnic sorting behavior in first and subsequent marriages. The two most frequently crossed boundaries – those involving White-Asian and White-Hispanic couples – are more permeable in remarriages than in first marriages. Boundaries that are crossed with less frequency – those between minority groups and the White-Black boundary-are less permeable in remarriages than in first marriages. Collectively, these findings suggest that racial and ethnic sorting processes in remarriage may reify existing social distances between pan-ethnic groups. Racial and ethnic variations in how the relative permeability of boundary changes between first and higher-order marriages underscore the importance of considering a broad array of interracial pairings when assessing the ways in which changes in family structure and marital sorting behavior promote integration.     

Multiracial identities,single race history: Contemporary consequences of historical race and marriage laws for racial classification

This work interrogates the role of the law as an “actor” in the spatial patterning of racial classification. Laws governing racial intermarriage represent key ways that rigid distinctions between groups were codified. Critically, there is a great deal of state variation in these laws. We draw on a unique data set that combines samples from the 1990 and 2000 Census (5 percent IPUMS) and the 2009–2011 estimates from the American Community Survey with information on state-specific legal bans against intermarriage. Results from multilevel logistic and multinomial analyses indicate that a past of legal regulation is associated with a lower likelihood of a “mixed” classification for the offspring of black-white interracial unions, particularly in the 2009–11 period. Our results provide evidence that place-specific institutional legacies are imprinted on the classification choices made even in the midst of expanding options.     

Pleas,priors, and prison: Racial/ethnic differences in sentencing

Final case disposition and sentencing decisions for whites, blacks, and Chicanos are modeled with event-history data from the State of California. Dynamic analyses are used to link processing models and theories. The three-way interaction of (1) pleading guilty × (2) racial/ethnic group membership × (3) the extent of prior court experience on rates of moving through the legal system is assessed, controlling for other legitimate and nonlegitimate influences. In a jurisdiction handling large numbers of defendants representing diverse racial/ethnic and cultural groups under determinate sentencing, the timing of legal processing is shown to be critical. Results demonstrate that pleading guilty increases the speed of processing most when sentences do not involve incarceration, though this effect is not found for second or later arrests of Chicanos. Generally, theories of resource mobilization receive greater support than cultural stereotyping.     

Religious intermarriage in the United States: trends, patterns, and predictors

The reciprocal connection between religion and family life makes the topic of religious intermarriage of particular importance in the sociology of religion. Spousal influences are key for motivating religious switching and other religious commitments. Religious intermarriage has also been shown to influence a host of other outcomes, including spousal conflict, domestic violence, divorce, and fertility. Using data from the 1973–1994 GSS, I estimate log-multiplicative models examining patterns of association between spouses’ religious affiliations across two broad cohorts. Two-step and FIML Heckman’s selection models are used to determine how education, migration, cohort, and denominational origins influence the probability of intermarriage and the distance of intermarriage if it occurs. Religious intermarriage increases across cohorts, but declines in homogamy are limited to liberal religious groups. Catholics and members of conservative sects are less likely to intermarry compared to others. The relative ordering of distances between religious groups was unchanged across cohorts. Educational attainment increases the likelihood of intermarriage, and marriages in which the woman has more education are more likely to be heterogamous. However, educational factors have no impact on the distance of intermarriage if it occurs. Geographically stable rural Southerners are least likely to intermarry and if they do, choose a more similar spouse.     

略论云南历史上的族际通婚

族际通婚即不同民族之间的通婚联姻,是促成民族融合的重要桥梁和纽带之一。在我国,族际通婚主要包括汉族与少数民族和少数民族相互之间的通婚联姻两种基本类型。本文谨据有关历史文献的记载和学术界的相关研究成果,对云南边疆民族地区族际通婚的历史渊源,汉晋之世夷汉通婚的"遑耶"制度,以及南诏、大理时期和元明以来的族际通婚的历史状况及其影响因素与社会功能,进行探索讨论和归纳总结以供参考。     

A multivariate analysis of response structure: Race attitudes, 1972–1977

A particular kind of latent class model is used to characterize the unobservable variable measured by six discrete indicators of racial stance in 1972 and 1977. Methods recently introduced by Clogg and Goodman, 1982, Clogg and Goodman, 1983) for the simultaneous latent structure analysis of two multidimensional contingency tables are employed in across-year homogeneity tests on the latent class proportions. Trends in multivariate response patterns over the 5-year interval are then examined by cross-classifying the predicted latent variable with selected demographic characteristics of respondents in each year. The results indicate that (1) no significant changes in the distribution of the latent variable occurred over the 5-year time period, and (2) the status of certain demographic variables as predictors of racial stance fluctuated between the two survey years.     

When contact counts: Intergroup contact on business and intermarriage resistance in the Caucasus region

Intergroup contact theory has been empirically supported in a variety of social contexts, but few samples have been drawn from rapidly developing nations undergoing severe political and sociocultural conflict. Using 2012 Caucasus Barometer data from the three nations of the South Caucasus — Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia — we test the effect of interreligious contact on various forms of out-group resistance in a region of the world that is both historically and presently marked with severe religious and ethnic conflict. Additionally, we take into account self-selection effects using propensity score matching. Results overwhelmingly support intergroup contact theory in all three countries, but objections toward intermarriage still remain high for treated groups. In addition, there exist significant differences based on the out-group studied, with the contact effects being the strongest for groups posing little religio-cultural or organized threat. Weaker contact effects, though, appear less related to threat and more contextual/out-group specific.     

Racial diversity, minority concentration, and trust in Canadian urban neighborhoods

Using a sample of 42,329 respondents nested within 4254 Canadian urban neighborhoods, this study demonstrates the conceptual and empirical importance of making a distinction between neighborhood racial diversity and minority concentration, and examines how each is uniquely associated with trust. Our analysis shows that at a given level of racial minority concentration, Whites are more trusting when their minority neighbors are more evenly distributed across racial minority groups. Meanwhile, Whites are less trusting as the neighborhood share of racial minorities increases. Overall, the effect of racial minority concentration tends to prevail over that of racial diversity.     

Measuring industrial variation in racial discrimination using log-linear models

This paper modifies previous research on discrimination by measuring different aspects of discrimination across 39 industrial segments of the labor market during an interesting period—the late 1960s. Operating within a standardization framework, we show how simple functions of multiplicative log-linear parameters can be meaningfully interpreted as measures of racial discrimination across and within industry categories. Our results indicate that there is substantial variation across industries in the degree and kind of discrimination.     

唐代京兆韦氏与皇室婚姻关系及其影响

京兆韦氏是唐代重要的皇婚对象,其与皇室通婚体现出时间长、类型全和重点突出的特点。这既与韦氏身集经学世家、武力强宗、仕宦名族和科举新贵等特征于一身的家族地位有关,也与关陇士族尚冠冕的婚姻风尚有关,亦与官方士族标准的重新修订相联系,还受到特定阶段政治环境的影响。作为隋唐时期最重要的介质性婚姻家族,京兆韦氏与唐室通婚有助于减缓因改朝换代而产生的矛盾冲突,使政局避免大起大落。联姻皇室对韦氏家族自身也有双重影响。     

新疆南部农村维汉通婚调查

文章在对新疆南部农村维汉通婚状况调查的基础上,分析南疆维汉通婚的特点,重点阐述汉族村落内的维汉通婚情况,探讨维汉混居村落的通婚少于维吾尔族村落和汉族村落的原因,指出维汉群体对通婚行为的态度差异还受到各自行为方式的影响。     

Race at the top: How companies shape the inclusion of African Americans on their boards in response to institutional pressures

Drawing on institutionalist theory, we conceptualize the racial composition of the boards of directors of large American companies as shaped in response to social and political norms. We use new longitudinal and cross-sectional data to test hypotheses about factors that shape the degree of racial inclusion on boards of directors among large public corporations, and we draw upon in-depth interviews with key participants to gain insights into the mechanisms that are likely to have generated the patterns we detect in our statistical models. We find evidence suggesting that large American corporations manage the racial composition of their elite leadership groups in response to these norms.     

Cohorts,education, and the evolution of tolerance

Normative and social structural explanations for changes in tolerance are tested using racial attitude items from 11 surveys between 1958 and 1978. Over the 20 years, while there were changes in the overall levels of racial tolerance, there were also changes in the upper and lower ends of a tolerance spectrum which differentially depended on cohort and educational effects. Regardless of the position in the tolerance spectrum, most of the change in racial attitudes resulted from across-the-board changes in all cohort and educational groups. The most racially conservative end of the spectrum was slightly eroded by increased educational attainment in the population, while the most racially liberal position was somewhat advanced by cohort replacement. In the final analysis, the normative perspective demonstrated the greater potential for applications to other, more complex, configurations of tolerance.     

Assimilation by the third generation? Marital choices of white ethnics at the dawn of the twentieth century

It is well known that marital ethnic endogamy declines by immigrant generation, but there is little information on how many generations are required for full marital assimilation. This study for 1880-1910 includes information on the birthplace of men’s grandparents, so we can compare the first, second, third, and later generations. We estimate the odds of marrying a native white woman with native-born parents (NWNP) for Irish, Germans, British, and men of other ethnicities. Most groups even in their third generation still show a significantly lower rate of marital assimilation than native stock men. But mixed ancestry (having at least one NWNP parent or grandparent) can result in nearly complete marital assimilation by the third generation.