Opposites Attract: Assortative Mating and Immigrant\u2013Native Intermarriage in Contemporary Sweden

Annika Elwert

doi:10.1007/s10680-019-09546-9

Abstract

This paper studies how immigrant–native intermarriages in Sweden are associated with individual characteristics of native men and women and patterns of assortative mating. Patterns of educational- and age-assortative mating that are similar to those found in native–native marriages may reflect openness to immigrant groups, whereas assortative mating patterns that indicate status considerations suggest that country of birth continues to serve as a boundary in the native marriage market. The study uses Swedish register data that cover the entire Swedish population for the period of 1991–2009. The results from binomial and multinomial logistic regressions show that low status of natives in terms of economic and demographic characteristics is associated with intermarriage and that intermarriages are characterized by educational and age heterogamy more than are native–native marriages. The findings indicate that immigrant women as well as immigrant men become more attractive marriage partners if they are considerably younger than their native spouses. This is particularly true for intermarriages with immigrants from certain regions of origin, such as wives from Asia and Africa and husbands from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Gender differences in the intermarriage patterns of native men and women are surprisingly small.

Highlights

A distinct feature of many marriage markets is homogamy in spousal choice
I start with discussing the coefficients of the individual characteristics, which relate to Hypothesis 2 (Attractiveness Hypothesis), and continue by discussing the assortative mating variables which relate to Hypothesis 1 (Openness Hypothesis) and Hypothesis 3 (Status Exchange Hypothesis)
Since marriage is always related to status (Kalmijn 1998), adopting the openness perspective would mean that immigrant–native marriages are not expected to differ from native–native marriages with regard to status homogamy, or, if they do, this is in a random fashion

Summary

Introduction

A distinct feature of many marriage markets is homogamy in spousal choice. Partners tend to be similar with regard to socioeconomic status (Kalmijn 1991), age (van Poppel et al 2001), education, race, and religion (Blackwell and Lichter 2004). While there was increasing similarity in certain characteristics such as education and age over several decades (Schwartz and Mare 2005; Van de Putte et al 2009), there was a decrease in homogamy in terms of country of birth during the rise of intermarriages between natives and immigrants in Europe.. Where intermarriages display systematic patterns of hypergamy and hypogamy, that is, native partners marry up or down in characteristics such as age and education, it can be concluded that the partners do not regard each other as social equals (Merton 1941). Intermarriage between immigrants and natives has increased in most European countries in past decades and is closely related to the proportion of immigrants in the country (Lanzieri 2012). The shares of immigrant–native marriage and cohabitation are close in size and have changed only marginally since the 1990s; for native men, there is a wider gap with immigrant–native cohabitation displaying lower rates with little increase over time and immigrant–native marriages displaying higher rates with a more pronounced increase over time

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Conclusion