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Title: Assortative Mating of the Divorced and Never Married, 1970-1988

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2003

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Abstract: I investigate whether there is an underlying tendency for divorced and never married persons to marry within their own marital history group in the United States. A theory of assortative mating suggests that if the never married and the divorced were to intermarry, their differences in distributional ties would create inefficiencies in the marriage; partly in order to avoid the inefficiencies, they tend to be homogamous. I apply log-linear models to marriages from the Vital Statistics Marriage Files, 1970-1988, to investigate the presence of the homogamous tendency. Consistent with the theory, the never married and divorced are more likely to marry within theiry group than to intermarry, even when removing the influences of relative group size and controlling for spousal education and age. Additional findings indicate that: a) in general, the tendency toward homogamy weakened between 1970 and 1988; and b) no evidence is available that the divorced and the never married engage in status exchange in order to intermarry and hence are groups ordered on a social hierarchy. Implications of the findings are discussed.

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Authors: Ono, Hiromi

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Publication Number: 03-533

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Family and Marriage, Other

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