Patterns of Ethnic Marriage in the United States

Using data from the November 1979 Current Population Survey on ethnic ancestry this paper examines the strength and patterns of ethnic intermarriage in the United States investigating some of the implications of rising intermarriage rates. After noting the infrequency of marriages across the dividing line of European/non-European ancestry we focus on marriages between individuals of European (or American Indian) ancestry. The authors use a log-linear modeling strategy to identify some major factors influencing intermarriage including group size mixed or single ancestry and degree of ethnic relatedness. With regard to the rising rate of intermarriage among white ethnic groups it is noted that even though persons of unmixed ancestry still exhibit fairly strong tendencies to marry endogamously a shift in the relative frequency of mixed versus unmixed ancestry is reducing the sizes of the categories with the strongest in-marriage tendencies and increasing the sizes of those with weaker such tendencies. (EXCERPT)