Opposites Attract: Assortative Mating and Immigrant–Native Intermarriage in Contemporary Sweden

European Journal of Population https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09546-9 Opposites Attract: Assortative Mating and Immigrant–Native Intermarriage in Contemporary Sweden Annika Elwert1 Received: 10 January 2017 / Accepted: 22 November 2019 © The Author(s) 2019 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. Keywords Intermarriage · Assortative mating · Age homogamy · Status exchange · Sweden * Annika Elwert 1 Department of Economic History, Centre for Economic Demography, Lund University, Alfa 1, Scheelevägen 15B, Box 7083, 220 07 Lund, Sweden 13 Vol.:(0123456789) A. Elwert 1 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.1 Scholars often study immigrant–native intermarriage in the context of immigrant integration and regularly regard intermarriage as the final step in the assimilation process (Gordon 1964). A rather neglected aspect of this is that “it takes two to tango”: it requires as much willingness on the part of natives to intermarry as it does on the part of immigrants. This study addresses a topic that has hitherto been understudied in that it analyses the (inter-)marriage behaviour of native Swedes.2 Focusing on the native majority expands the intermarriage literature and leads to a better understanding of societal openness towards minorities in the majority’s marriage market. By taking into account the characteristics of both the native partner and the immigrant partner, this paper is an important contribution to the intermarriage literature. Intermarriage is often thought to signal the fact that different social groups regard one another as equals (cf. Kalmijn 1991), but marriage can also reproduce social hierarchies by excluding certain groups from the pool of potential partners and reproducing social structures within these. 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 patterns therefore have the potential to reveal implicit hierarchies of immigrants in the marriage market.3 The particular question that this paper attempts to answer is whether intermarriages are associated with the status of native Swedes as well as that of immigrants in the Swedish marriage market. By analysing the individual characteristics of natives that are associated with intermarriage as well as the educational- and ageassortative mating patterns of intermarried couples rather than the mere frequency of such unions, this study contributes to a previously understudied area in the intermarriage literature. It uses high-quality register data covering the entire population 1 In the literature, the term intermarriage is often used to describe marriages across social groups such as intermarriage between educational groups. I use it exclusively to refer to immigrant–native marriages. 2 In the context of Sweden, few studies have focused on natives (Haandrikman 2014; Niedomysl et al. 2010; Östh et al. 2011), and they are either more descriptive by nature or analyses of individual characteristics that are associated with intermarriage rather than joint characteristics of couples. 3 The use of the terms hypergamy and hypogamy in relation to educational and age homogamy can be confusing. Since hypergamy denotes “marrying up”, I use the term to refer on a gender-neutral basis to marrying someone who either has a higher education or is older. Likewise, hypogamy relates to marrying someone who either has a lower education or is younger. It should, however, be remembered that this corresponds to marrying up in status only with regard to education and not with regard to age since younger age denotes higher status in the marriage market. 13 Opposites Attract: Assortative Mating and Immigrant–Native… 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 Men 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 1994 1999 2004 2009 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 Women 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 Native−native marriage Immigrant−native marriage Native−native cohabitation Immigrant−native cohabitation Fig. 1  Shares of native–native unions and immigrant–native unions of all unions of native Swedish men and women in Sweden 1969–2009 of residents in Sweden and includes all marriages and non-marital unions with common children that were established in the period 1991–2009. 2 Background and Previous Research on Immigrant–Native Intermarriages in Europe and Sweden 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). This general increase in intermarriage in Europe is largely related to a substantial increase in intermarriage with spouses from countries outside the EU (de Valk and Medrano 2014). Intermarriage rates in Sweden have risen continuously since the 1970s, and the increase is somewhat steeper for men than for women. Figure 1 displays the proportions of immigrant–native intermarriages 13 A. Elwert (defined here as marriages between a native Swede4 and their foreign-born s (...truncated)