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BLACK–WHITE MARITAL MATCHING: RACE, ANTHROPOMETRICS, AND SOCIOECONOMICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2016

Pierre-André Chiappori ,
Sonia Oreffice  and
Climent Quintana-Domeque
Pierre-André Chiappori
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Sonia Oreffice*
Affiliation:
University of Surrey and IZA
Climent Quintana-Domeque
Affiliation:
University of Oxford and IZA
*
Address correspondence to: Sonia Oreffice, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Economics, University of Surrey, Ground Floor AD Building, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7HX, UK; e-mail: s.oreffice@surrey.ac.uk.
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Abstract:

We analyze the interaction of black–white race with physical and socioeconomic characteristics in the US marriage market, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We estimate who inter-racially marries whom along anthropometric and socioeconomic characteristics dimensions. The black women who inter-marry are the thinner and more educated in their group; instead, white women are the fatter and less educated; black or white men who inter-marry are poorer and thinner. While women in “mixed” couples find a spouse who is poorer but thinner than if they intra-married, black men match with a white woman who is more educated than if they intra-married, and a white man finds a thinner spouse in a black woman. Our general findings are consistent with the “social status exchange” hypothesis, but the finding that black men who marry white women tend to be poorer than black men who marry black women is not.

Keywords

inter-racial couplesmarriage marketBMIwageseducation“social status exchange” hypothesisD1J1
Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 82 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 399 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2016 

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