Marital Homophily on Illicit Drug Use among Young Adults: Assortative Mating or Marital Influence?

Abstract

We assess the similarity between marital partners on the use of illegal drugs prior to marriage and within the most recent year of marriage, and the dynamic processes underlying observed similarity. Similarity after marriage may result from assortative mating or socialization or both. Concordant and discordant patterns of drug use at each time between spouses/partners in a sample of 545 pairs (X age husbands = 30, X age wives = 28) are cross-tabulated to generate a 16-fold table. Similarity at one point in time and selection and socialization effects underlying change over time are estimated without controls for population heterogeneity through loglinear models, and with controls for heterogeneity through latent trait models. While there is evidence for assortative mating, the socialization effect documented by the loglinear models disappears in the latent trait models.