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.