Measuring Marital Assimilation: Intermarriage among Natives and Immigrants

Abstract

Marital assimilation has been a historically important aspect of immigrant adaptation and acculturation. Does the dual status of being a racial minority and an immigrant increase barriers to marital assimilation? And how does marital assimilation differ between natives and immigrants across racial minorities—African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans? Using data from the 1990 Census, we apply log-linear models to answer these questions by comparing marriage patterns by racial and nativity combinations of couples. Our results indicate that Latinos are most likely to marry Whites, followed by Asian Americans and African Americans. The overwhelming share of immigrants tend to marry same-race immigrants rather than same-race natives or other racial minorities. At the same time, racial minority immigrants are substantially more likely to marry their native same-race counterparts than to marry Whites. Clearly, intermarriage between natives and immigrants is a significant but often neglected aspect of contemporary patterns of assimilation.