Status Exchange?: Remarriage and Intermarriage
Individuals seeking remarriage often face a more restricted marriage market compared with those seeking first marriage. Unique remarriage markets suggest that individuals cast a wider net to find a spouse. In this paper, drawing data from 2008 to 2010 American Community Surveys, we examine assortative mating patterns among four types of marriages formed in the previous year: both are first married, the husband is first married and the wife is remarried, the wife is first married and the husband is remarried, and both are remarried. In order to examine who are likely to marry among those at risk of marrying, we apply conditional logit models to compare, for each type of marriage, how actual couples differ from fictional couples. Our results reveal that marriages in which one spouse is remarried tend to be heterogamous based on traits such as race/ethnicity, nativity, age, and educational attainment. These results suggest strong status exchange among marriages involving previously married individuals. (co-author Prof., Daniel T Lichter, Cornell University)
