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Title: Interethnic marriage, economic assimilation and self selection

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2003

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Abstract: This paper examines relationship between interethnic marriages and economic assimilation among immigrants in the United States. Two alternative hypotheses are considered: productivity hypothesis and selection hypothesis. According to the productivity hypothesis, immigrants married to native-born spouses may assimilate faster than immigrants married to foreign-born spouses because spouses play an integral role in the human capital accumulation of their partners. Alternatively, the relation between interethnic marriages and assimilation may be spurious because intermarried immigrants may be a selected subsample from the population of all married immigrants. These alternative hypotheses are analyzed within a model in which earnings of immigrants and their interethnic marital status are jointly determined. The main empirical finding is that selection hypothesis is important, but there remains a sizeable and positive effect of interethnic marriages on economic assimilation of immigrants.

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Authors: Kantarevic, Jasmin

Conference Name: Canadian Economic Association

Publisher Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity

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