Children of immigrants: Racial assortative mating and the transition to adulthood

Abstract

Few studies have followed immigrant-origin individuals from adolescence to adulthood or examined their spousal choices. Using longitudinal data from Add Health, we present a life-course model that examines the differences in racial assortative mating between children of immigrants and non-immigrants. The results reveal substantial variation in racial endogamy from generation to generation. Racial endogamy was highest in the third generation, but this is due entirely to high racial endogamy among whites. Out-marriage was most pronounced among first- and second-generation immigrants. Our life-course approach shows that the effects of race and generation on intermarriage were mediated by family background (e.g. language proficiency and residence) and educational attainment (at time of marriage), a finding largely indicative of processes of marital assimilation that unfold over time and generation. Evidence of acculturation and structural assimilation, however, could not fully account for the large, persistent, and uneven effects of race and generation on interracial marriage.

Keywords:

• immigration
• assimilation
• children of immigrants
• life course
• intermarriage
• assortative mating
• race/ethnicity
• Add Health
• event history analysis
• United States

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Maurice Anyawie is based in the Department of Sociology and Center for International Social Science Research, University of Chicago, USA. Daniel T. Lichter is based in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy and Department of Sociology, Cornell University, USA.

2 Please direct all correspondence to Maurice Anyawie, Department of Sociology and Center for International Social Science Research, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA; or by Email: [email protected].

3 The co-authors acknowledge the helpful comments of the reviewers and the editor, as well as technical advice from Zhenchao Qian on modelling strategies. They assume full responsibility for the final manuscript and interpretation of results. This research uses data from Add Health, a programme project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth. No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.