Full Citation
Title: Marital Assimilation and Economic Stratification among US Immigrants, 1996-2010
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2011
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Abstract: How does intermarriage affect the economic well-being of immigrants and the children of immigrants? The rapid increase in the population of first and second generation immigrants in the United States raises questions about the processes through which immigrants are integrated into the stratification structure. Intermarriage is a key component of both old (Gordon 1964) and new (Alba and Nee 2003) perspectives on immigrant assimilation, and stratification researchers likewise see marital homogamy as evidence of rigidity in the stratification structure. Long-term trends in assortative mating in the US suggest increasing closure based on educational attainment, and increasing openness on the basis of race and ethnicity. Yet after decades of rising rates of intermarriage, Qian and Lichter (2007) found that during the 1990s, rates of inter-racial marriage between whites and Hispanics and whites and Asian-Americans declined, and intermarriage between immigrant and native-born co-ethnics increased. They interpret these trends as the results of the increased availability of co-ethnic marital partners. The question remains as to how trends in assortative mating affect income disparities between immigrant and non-immigrant households. We use pooled cross-sectional data from the IPUMS-CPS to compare trends in the economic outcomes of immigrant and non-immigrant couple-headed households in the United States between 1996-2010. Based on previous research, we hypothesize that (1) Increasing ethnic homogamy will be associated with declines in educational homogamy among immigrants, and (2) Declining rates of intermarriage will slow the pace at which second generation immigrant households will achieve economic parity with non-immigrant households. We further hypothesize that (3) rates of intermarriage and educational homogamy will be highest for immigrants with a college degree, and that this group will compare favorably with non-immigrant households in terms of household employment and income.
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Authors: McManus, Patricia
Conference Name: Spring Meeting of RC 28
Publisher Location: Essex, UK
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Migration and Immigration, Other
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