Intermarriage and Socioeconomic Integration

• Author: Tao Song,Delia Furtado
• Published date: 01 November 2015
• Date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215594629
• Subject Matter: Section II: Intermarriage and Dimensions of Integration

ANNALS, AAPSS, 662, November 2015 207

DOI: 10.1177/0002716215594629

Intermarriage

and

Socioeconomic

Integration:

Trends in

Earnings

Premiums

among U.S.

Immigrants

Who Marry

Natives

By

DELIA FURTADO

and

TAO SONG

594629ANN The Annals of the American AcademyIntermarriage and Socioeconomic Integration

research-article2015

Previous studies show that immigrants to the United

States married to natives earn higher wages than immi-

grants married to other immigrants. Using data from

the 1980 to 2000 U.S. censuses and the 2005 to 2010

American Community Surveys, we show that these

wage premiums have increased over time. Our evi-

dence suggests that the trends are unlikely to be

explained by changes in the attributes of immigrants

who tend to marry natives but might instead be a result

of changes in how these attributes are rewarded in the

labor market. Because immigrants married to natives

tend to have more schooling, part of the increasing

premium can be explained by increases in the value of

a college education. We find, however, that even when

allowing the value of education and English-speaking

ability to vary, intermarriage wage premiums have

increased over time. We believe these patterns might

be driven by changes in technology and globalization,

which have made communication and management

skills more highly rewarded in the U.S. labor market.

Keywords: intermarriage; immigration; wage pre-

mium; technology change

Immigrants married to the native-born tend

to be more socially integrated than immi-

grants married to other immigrants. In the

United States, those married to the native-born

typically have better English language skills and

know more about U.S. customs and culture

both because immigrants with these skills are

more likely to marry natives and because shar-

ing a household with a native brings on further

Delia Furtado is an associate professor of economics at

the University of Connecticut. She is also a research

fellow of the Centre for Research & Analysis of

Migration (CReAM) and the Institute for the Study of

Labor (IZA). Her research interests are in immigration,

family, and peer and network effects.

Tao Song is a PhD student in the Department of

Economics at the University of Connecticut. His

research interests include immigration, skill-biased

technical change, and education, along with related

topics in labor and urban economics.

208 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

social integration. This article examines whether the differential between hourly

wages of immigrants married to natives and immigrants married to other immi-

grants has changed in recent decades. We also explore whether changes in

observable characteristics of immigrants who choose to marry natives can explain

trends in this differential. We test whether the general patterns are robust across

education groups and races. Finally, we explore how much of the increasing wage

premium for immigrant/native intermarriage might be explained by the fact that

education and English-speaking ability have become more highly rewarded in

the U.S. economy.

It has been well established in the literature that immigrants married to

natives have better labor market outcomes than immigrants married to other

immigrants. Intermarriage1 wage premiums have been found for immigrants in

Australia (Meng and Gregory 2005), the United States (Kantarevic 2005; Chi and

Drewianka 2014), France (Meng and Meurs 2009), Germany (Nottmeyer 2010),

Sweden (Nekby 2010; Dribe and Nystedt 2014), and the Netherlands (Gevrek

2011). Immigrants married to natives are also more likely to be employed than

those married to nonnatives (Furtado and Theodoropoulos 2009; Gevrek 2011).

There is disagreement in this literature, however, about whether marriage

choice has a causal impact on labor market outcomes or whether unobservable

characteristics, such as ambition or general comfort with the host country’s lan-

guage, customs, laws, and institutions, increase the likelihoods of marriage to a

native and labor market success. Taking instrumental variables approaches,

which exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the opportunities for marrying

natives (driven by the size of the immigrant population and sex ratios within mar-

riage markets), several papers find that intermarriage premiums persist even

when steps are taken to control for the unobservable characteristics of the immi-

grants who choose to marry natives (Meng and Gregory 2005; Meng and Meurs

2009; Furtado and Theodoropoulos 2009). This may not be surprising given that

a native spouse and the native networks acquired through such a marriage can

accelerate an immigrant’s language proficiency, improve understanding of social

and cultural customs, and provide information about local labor markets. Furtado

and Theodoropoulos (2010) provide several pieces of evidence that suggest that

employment probabilities are higher for immigrants married to natives as a result

of access to native networks that are helpful in the job search process. On the

other hand, using a similar instrumental variables approach, Kantarevic (2005)

finds that the intermarriage wage premium disappears in the United States when

steps are taken to control for omitted variables and reverse causality.

The validity of all of these instrumental variables-based studies rests on the

assumption that marriage market characteristics do not have direct impacts on

labor market outcomes. Questioning this assumption, several papers instead

examine earnings profiles of immigrants before and after they marry to deter-

mine whether earnings jump postmarriage or whether the immigrants who even-

tually marry natives always had higher earnings (Nekby 2010; Nottmeyer 2010;

Dribe and Nystedt 2014). These papers do not find dramatic earnings jumps for

immigrants married to natives relative to those who marry other immigrants;

immigrants married to natives always have higher earnings. This may be because