Abstract
Religious intermarriage in England and Wales is an under-researched area, compared with ethnically divergent and immigrant/host intermarriage. More specifically, the aim of the study is to identify whether there are any statistically significant differences in personal or spatial characteristics between religiously endogamous and exogamous couples, and if so, to provide some explanation as to why. Use is made of the responses to the religion question in the 2001 and 2011 censuses and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) longitudinal study, so as to avoid bias inherent in trying to establish random survey samples of minor-religion members and their partners. Although the paper considers religious intermarriage generally, there is a focus on Jews as the only group which demonstrates a high level of stability of religion reporting and material levels of exogamy. Logistic regression indicates that Jewish population density, start decade of the partnership and whether the individuals are in work and live in an area with a large synagogue are statistically significant differentiators that have a material impact on levels of exogamy and endogamy. A strong link between exogamy and cohabitation (and delayed childbearing) is also established for this group. Some comparisons between Jews and religiously intermarried groups in general are also made, and the utility of the ONS longitudinal study for examination of small groups is established.
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Notes
The dataset has been constructed ensuring that LS members whose partner also happens to be an LS member (about 1% of the sample) are included in an equitable manner, and are not over- or under-represented.
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Acknowledgements
All census data used in this paper are Crown Copyright and reproduced or adapted from data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) licensed under the Open Government Licence version 2.0. 2011 census tables can be accessed via http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/data_finder. The 2011 safeguarded microdata were made available via the UK Data Service and accessed under the terms of its End User Licence. The ONS Longitudinal Study outputs presented were developed under LS Project 0301777 and have been cleared for publication by ONS via publication clearance forms dated 15 October 2018 and 10 January 2019. The permission of the Office for National Statistics to use the Longitudinal Study is gratefully acknowledged, as is the help provided by Rachel Stuchbury and her colleagues at the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information and User Support (CeLSIUS). CeLSIUS is supported by the ESRC Census of Population Programme under project ES/K000365/1. The author alone is responsible for the interpretation of the data. This work contains statistical data from ONS which is Crown Copyright. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates.
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Sapiro, P. Religious Intermarriage in England and Wales: Differences in Individual and Area Characteristics of Endogamous and Exogamous Couples. Eur J Population 36, 415–437 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09534-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09534-z