Ethnic Endogamy Among Mexican American Grooms: A Reanalysis of Generational and Occupational Effects

Theoretical Considerations suggest that, among Mexican Americans, generation, a measure of cultural assimilation, is more closely related to exogamy than is exogamy than is occupation, a measure of structural assimilation. The classic study by Mittelbach and Moore (1968), however, argued that occupational effects were greater than generational effects for Mexican Americans in Los Angeles County in 1963. In contrast, our log-linear reanalysis of those data found them to be consistent with theoretical expectations and showed that the importance of generation in explaining exogamy for Mexican American males is not exceeded by that of occupation.