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The Study of Assortative Mating: Theory, Data, and Analysis

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Analytical Family Demography

Part of the book series: The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis ((PSDE,volume 47))

Abstract

Assortative mating provides an indicator of integration and fragmentation in modern societies, and of shifting social boundaries between groups. Assortative mating is expressed in both marital homogamy (likes marrying likes) and heterogamy, variously labeled exogamy, out-marriage, or intermarriage. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate the great progress—both conceptually and methodologically—in studies of assortative mating over the past 25 years. It provides a forward-looking view of key research questions on assortative mating in rapidly globalizing societies and emerging data analytical problems that increasingly require new data, measurement frameworks, and statistical or empirical approaches. The rise of cross-cutting social circles in an increasingly globalized environment, in an age of the internet of growing interpersonal connectivity (i.e., social media), and on-going reductions in the constraints of space suggest new research questions that will create new opportunities for innovation and build on a rich theoretical and research tradition in family demography.

The authors benefited from the helpful comments of Robert Schoen, Christine Schwartz, and Joe Price, and from the support of the Cornell Population Center and Brown University’s Population Studies & Training Center.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These authors also included students in the dating sample if they ever held hands with someone, kissed this person on the mouth, and told them that they liked or loved them. Other studies measure dating by sexual intimacy (Blackwell and Lichter 2004), which makes strict comparisons of assortative dating (e.g., interracial dating) difficult, especially as nonmarital sexual attitudes and behavior has shifted since the introduction of modern contraception.

  2. 2.

    We acknowledge that sex and racial self-identification can change over time. Cisgender (identified with birth sex) and transgender are part of the new lexicon of gender identification. This topic requires a much longer discussion than the space available to us in this chapter.

  3. 3.

    Population heterogeneity is evident along many dimensions that are changing the mate selection process. This includes diverse family and relationship backgrounds and trajectories. This is revealed in growing shares of people who have eschewed marriage altogether, who have cohabited, married, and divorced multiple times, and who are no longer culturally insular as a result of the rise of the Internet, social media, and improvements in transportation and communication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Daniel T. Lichter

  2. Department of Sociology, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Zhenchao Qian

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    Robert Schoen

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Lichter, D.T., Qian, Z. (2019). The Study of Assortative Mating: Theory, Data, and Analysis. In: Schoen, R. (eds) Analytical Family Demography. The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis, vol 47. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93227-9_13

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