American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Who Marries Whom? The Role of Segregation by Race and Class
American Economic Review
(pp. 3623–73)
Abstract
Americans rarely marry outside their race or class group, a pattern with well-documented implications for inequality and intergenerational mobility. Limited exposure may partly explain these low intergroup marriage rates. We instrument for exposure using variation in childhood neighborhoods based on whether other race and class groups had more opposite-sex children of similar age. Exposure increases interclass (high- and low-parent income) marriage but has no detectable effect on interracial (White and Black) marriage. A spatial marriage model predicts that residential segregation—one of many forms of exposure—accounts for more than one-third of marital sorting by class but less than 5 percent by race.Citation
Goldman, Benjamin, Jamie Gracie, and Sonya R. Porter. 2026. "Who Marries Whom? The Role of Segregation by Race and Class." American Economic Review 116 (10): 3623–73. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20250115Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
- J62 Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
- R23 Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics