Ethnic Capital and Intermarriage: A Case Study of American Jews

Abstract

Previous studies of ethnicity have focused on the role played by structural factors in assimilation and related processes. The utility of human and social capital in explaining analogous religious phenomena (e.g., religious switching and apostasy) suggests that similar actor-centered explanations may advance t k understanding of ethnicity. We propose a model of ethnicity that integrates existing structure-centered approaches with the concepts of ethnic human and social capital in a soft rational choice theory framework. The usefulness of this approach is tested with respect to intermarriage among American Jews, who maintain an extraordinarily diverse array of socializing institutions and have wide variation in levels of ethnic capitol. The inclusion of variables measuring ethnic capital provides a significant increase in explanatory power. It is suggested that this framework may be applicable for other ethnic groups and further research is recommended.