Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ubc/clssrn/clsrn_admin-2015-10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Group Size and Social Interaction: a Canada-US Comparison of Interracial Marriage

Author

Listed:
  • Hou, Feng
  • Myles, John
  • Schimmele, Christoph
  • Wu, Zheng
Abstract
While black-white intermarriage is uncommon in the United States, blacks in Canada are just as likely to marry whites as to marry blacks. Asians, in contrast, are more likely to marry whites in the US than in Canada. We test the claim that high rates of interracial marriage are indicative of high levels of social integration against Peter Blau’s ‘macrostructural’ thesis that relative group size is the key to explaining differences in intermarriage rates across marriage markets. Using micro-data drawn from the American Community Survey and the Canadian Census, we demonstrate that the relative size of racial groups accounts for over two-thirds of the US-Canada difference in black-white unions and largely explains the cross-country difference in Asian-white unions. Under broadly similar social and economic conditions, a large enough difference in relative group size can become the predominant determinant of group differences in the prevalence of interracial unions.

Suggested Citation

  • Hou, Feng & Myles, John & Schimmele, Christoph & Wu, Zheng, 2015. "Group Size and Social Interaction: a Canada-US Comparison of Interracial Marriage," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2015-10, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 07 Jul 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2015-10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/CLSRN%20Working%20Paper%20no.%20151%20-%20Hou%20et%20al.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William E. Even & David A. Macpherson, 1993. "The Decline of Private-Sector Unionism and the Gender Wage Gap," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 28(2), pages 279-296.
    2. Feng Hou & Simon Coulombe, 2010. "Earnings Gaps for Canadian-Born Visible Minorities in the Public and Private Sectors," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 36(1), pages 29-43, March.
    3. Suzanne Model & Gene Fisher, 2001. "Black-White Unions: West Indians and African Americans compared," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(2), pages 177-185, May.
    4. Aaron Gullickson, 2006. "Education and black-white interracial marriage," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 43(4), pages 673-689, November.
    5. Vincent Fu, 2001. "Racial intermarriage pairings," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(2), pages 147-159, May.
    6. Ira N. Gang & Kunal Sen & Myeong‐Su Yun, 2008. "Poverty In Rural India: Caste And Tribe," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(1), pages 50-70, March.
    7. Daniel T. Lichter & J. Brian Brown & Zhenchao Qian & Julie H. Carmalt, 2007. "Marital Assimilation Among Hispanics: Evidence of Declining Cultural and Economic Incorporation?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 88(3), pages 745-765, September.
    8. Tamás Bartus, 2005. "Estimation of marginal effects using margeff," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 5(3), pages 309-329, September.
    9. Patrick Puhani, 2000. "The Heckman Correction for Sample Selection and Its Critique," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 53-68, February.
    10. Matthijs Kalmijn & Frank Tubergen, 2010. "A comparative perspective on intermarriage: Explaining differences among national-origin groups in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(2), pages 459-479, May.
    11. Yun, Myeong-Su, 2004. "Decomposing differences in the first moment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 275-280, February.
    12. Roland G. Fryer Jr., 2007. "Guess Who's Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 71-90, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ray, Tridip & Roy Chaudhuri, Arka & Sahai, Komal, 2020. "Whose education matters? An analysis of inter caste marriages in India," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 619-633.
    2. Nora Gordon & Sarah Reber, 2018. "The effects of school desegregation on mixed-race births," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(2), pages 561-596, April.
    3. Rachel M. Shattuck & Meredith A. Kleykamp, 2018. "Conducive Characteristics or Anti-Racist Context? Decomposing the Reasons for Veterans’ High Likelihood of Interracial Marriage," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 37(2), pages 261-299, April.
    4. Allan Puur & Leen Rahnu & Luule Sakkeus & Martin Klesment & Liili Abuladze, 2018. "The formation of ethnically mixed partnerships in Estonia: A stalling trend from a two-sided perspective," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 38(38), pages 1111-1154.
    5. Antonella Biscione & Dorothée Boccanfuso & Raul Caruso & Annunziata Felice, 2022. "The innovation gender gap in transition countries," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 39(2), pages 493-516, July.
    6. Powers, Daniel A. & Yun, Myeong-Su, 2009. "Multivariate Decomposition for Hazard Rate Models," IZA Discussion Papers 3971, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Bhaumik, Sumon Kumar & Gang, Ira N. & Yun, Myeong-Su, 2006. "Ethnic conflict and economic disparity: Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 754-773, December.
    8. Yan-Liang Yu & Zhenmei Zhang, 2017. "Interracial Marriage and Self-Reported Health of Whites and Blacks in the United States," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 36(6), pages 851-870, December.
    9. Delia Furtado & Stephen J. Trejo, 2013. "Interethnic marriages and their economic effects," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 15, pages 276-292, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Chunbei Wang & Le Wang, 2012. "The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage between natives and immigrants to the U.S," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 171-192, June.
    11. Ira N. Gang & Kunal Sen & Myeong‐Su Yun, 2008. "Poverty In Rural India: Caste And Tribe," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(1), pages 50-70, March.
    12. Yiru Wang, 2023. "Famine and matching by socioeconomic status—evidence from the Great Chinese Famine," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 855-912, September.
    13. Kaspar, Violet, 2013. "Mental health of Aboriginal children and adolescents in violent school environments: Protective mediators of violence and psychological/nervous disorders," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 70-78.
    14. Altay Mussurov & G Arabsheibani, 2015. "Informal self-employment in Kazakhstan," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-19, December.
    15. Carlos Gradin, 2015. "Poverty and Ethnicity among Black South Africans," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 27(5), pages 921-942, December.
    16. Luis Ayala & Antonio Jurado & Jesús Pérez‐Mayo, 2011. "Income Poverty And Multidimensional Deprivation: Lessons From Cross‐Regional Analysis," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 57(1), pages 40-60, March.
    17. Pierre-André CHIAPPORI & Sonia OREFFICE & Climent QUINTANA-DOMEQUE, 2016. "Black-White Marital Matching: Race, Anthtopometrics and Socioeconomics," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(4), pages 399-421, December.
    18. Carlos Gradin, 2009. "Why is Poverty So High Among Afro-Brazilians? A Decomposition Analysis of the Racial Poverty Gap," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(9), pages 1426-1452.
    19. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay & Elliott Green, 2018. "Explaining inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa," Working Papers 90, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
    20. Delia Furtado & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2011. "Interethnic marriage: a choice between ethnic and educational similarities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1257-1279, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    intermarriage; macrostructural theory; social integration; group size;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2015-10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vivian Tran (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.