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.     

Marital Assimilation Among Hispanics: Evidence of Declining Cultural and Economic Incorporation?*

Objective. We document intermarriage patterns between Hispanics and non‐Hispanic whites over the 1990 to 2000 period in 155 U.S. metropolitan areas and evaluate the effects of spatial, cultural, and economic assimilation on interdecade changes in intermarriage. We hypothesize that changes in Hispanic‐white intermarriage during the 1990s reflect changing spatial, cultural, and economic assimilation among U.S. Hispanics. Methods. We use data from the 1990 and 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Samples. Results. Analyses show that intermarriage between Hispanics and non‐Hispanic whites declined during the 1990s, a result fueled in part by burgeoning immigration of Hispanics, especially Mexicans. The 1990s also ushered in a period of increasing Hispanic segregation from non‐Hispanic whites, growing language barriers, and accelerated educational inequality, which also dampened Hispanic‐white intermarriage rates. Conclusions. Our results imply that the Hispanic population is at a transition point, if intermarriage rates are an indication, and possibly a new period of retrenchment in the assimilation process.     

Child Poverty and the Changing Rural Family1

Abstract Our main objective is to give demographic perspective to changes since 1960 in the comparative economic circumstances of non-metropolitan and metropolitan children. Specifically, we examine absolute and relative poverty rates using child records from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 Public Use Microdata Samples and from the 1990 March annual demographic file of the Current Population Survey. Results reveal that more than one-in-five nonmetropolitan children today are poor, an increasing proportion are deeply impoverished, and a growing share are living in families with incomes lagging standards typical of the average American family. Changes in family structure accounted for roughly 60 percent of the increase in nonmetropolitan child poverty during the 1980s. Positive economic effects associated with increasing female employment, rising education levels, and declining family size in nonmetropolitan areas were more than offset by the deleterious effects of changing family structure. And the persistently higher rates of nonmetropolitan than metropolitan child poverty cannot be explained away by compositional differences in parental employment patterns, educational levels, or family size. Our results suggest that recent changes in family formation and structure cannot be disassociated from the changing economic welfare of children, especially for those living in nonmetropolitan America.     

The underemployment of American rural women: prevalence,trends and spatial inequality

The growing numerical significance of women in the US nonmetropolitan labor force has not been matched by parallel efforts to document the changing quality of their employment. In this paper. Lichter uses the labor utilization framework of Clogg and Sullivan to examine the prevalence and spatial convergence of various forms of female underemployment during 1970-1985. Data from the March annual demographic files of the Current Population Survey reveal that underemployment has been a significant aspect of the employment experiences of nonmetropolitan women during this period. There has been little evidence of spatial or sex convergence in labor market outcomes. Roughly 1 of every 3 rural female workers today is a discouraged worker, jobless, employed part-time involuntarily, or working for poverty-level wages. Moreover, rural women continue to suffer substantially higher levels of economic underemployment than urban women and rural men. This study reinforces the view that rural women remain a seriously underutilized labor resource in the US.     

Spatial inequality and poverty among American children

National-level statistics often mask extreme spatial differentiation in child poverty. Using county-level data from the 1990 US decennial census summary tape file, we show that child poverty is distributed unevenly over geographic space. Child poverty is concentrated in counties in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and the southern black belt. Child poverty rates are strongly influenced by the local industrial composition (e.g., agriculture and manufacturing), but the effects are largely indirect, operating primarily through reduced employment opportunities among adult workers. High county unemployment and underemployment rates contribute directly to children's economic deprivation, as well as indirectly by undermining the formation and stability of two-parent families. Our results highlight existing spatial differentiation and inequality in children's economic well-being, and provide a point of departure for additional research on the geography of child poverty.     

Emerging Patterns of Hispanic Residential Segregation: Lessons from Rural and Small‐Town America

The past two decades have ushered in a period of widespread spatial diffusion of Hispanics well beyond traditional metropolitan gateways. This article examines emerging patterns of racial and ethnic residential segregation in new Hispanic destinations over the 1990–2010 period, linking county, place, and block data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 decennial censuses. Our multiscalar analyses of segregation are framed by classical models of immigrant assimilation and alternative models of place stratification. We ask whether Hispanics are integrating spatially with the native population and whether recent demographic and economic processes have eroded or perpetuated racial boundaries in nonmetropolitan areas. We show that Hispanic residential segregation from whites is often exceptionally high and declining slowly in rural counties and communities. New Hispanic destinations, on average, have higher Hispanic segregation levels than established gateway communities. The results also highlight microscale segregation patterns within rural places and in the open countryside (i.e., outside places), a result that is consistent with emerging patterns of “white flight.” Observed estimates of Hispanic‐white segregation across fast‐growing nonmetropolitan counties often hide substantial heterogeneity in residential segregation. Divergent patterns of rural segregation reflect local‐area differences in population dynamics, economic inequality, and the county employment base (using Economic Research Service functional specialization codes). Illustrative maps of Hispanic boom counties highlight spatially uneven patterns of racial diversity. They also provide an empirical basis for our multivariate analyses, which show that divergent patterns of local‐area segregation often reflect spatial variation in employment across different industrial sectors.     

Life course transitions of American children: Parental cohabitation, marriage, and single motherhood

We examine the life course transitions into and from families headed by unmarried cohabiting couples for a recent cohort of American children. Life table estimates, based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth mother-child files, indicate about one in four children will live in a family headed by a cohabiting couple sometime during childhood. Economic uncertainty is an important factor determining whether children in single-parent families subsequently share a residence with a mother's unmarried partner. Moreover, virtually all children in cohabiting-couple families will experience rapid subsequent changes in family status. Our estimates provide a point of departure for future work on children's exposure to parental cohabitation and its social and economic implications.     

Marriage Markets and Intermarriage: Exchange in First Marriages and Remarriages

Drawing on data from the American Community Survey, we compare patterns of assortative mating in first marriages, remarriages, and mixed-order marriages. We identify a number of ascribed and achieved characteristics that are viewed as resources available for exchange, both as complements and substitutes. We apply conditional logit models to show how patterns of assortative mating among never-married and previously married persons are subject to local marriage market opportunities and constraints. The results reveal that previously married individuals “cast a wider net”: spousal pairings are more heterogamous among remarriages than among first marriages. Marital heterogamy, however, is reflected in systematic evidence of trade-offs showing that marriage order (i.e., status of being never-married) is a valued trait for exchange. Never-married persons are better positioned than previously married persons to marry more attractive marital partners, variously measured (e.g., highly educated partners). Previously married persons—especially women—are disadvantaged in the marriage market, facing demographic shortages of potential partners to marry. Marriage market constraints take demographic expression in low remarriage rates and in heterogamous patterns of mate selection in which previously married partners often substitute other valued characteristics in marriage with never-married persons.