Interethnic marriage: A choice between ethnic and educational similarities

Abstract

This paper explores the role of assortative matching on education in explaining the relationship between schooling and ethnic endogamy. Using 2000 US Census data, we find that matching on education rather than ethnicity is more important for natives than for the foreign born and for the foreign born who arrived as young children rather than for those who arrived as teenagers. Education does not appear to influence the marriage decisions of Asians, but matching on education plays a larger role in the decisions of whites than those of Hispanics. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.