Ethnic Intermarriage and Gender in New York City

This article examines ethnic marriage patterns for both men and women in New York City from public use samples of United States census schedules for years with roughly comparable data: 1900, 1910, 1960, and 1980. Log-linear models which take into account both the married and the unmarried as well as differences by gender reveal the structures of ethnic pairings at each census and illuminate important transitions....The intermarriage transition in New York City suggests that, in the first stages of immigration, unbalanced ethnic sex-ratios were powerful forces precipitating intermarriage. The imbalance extended to second-generation ethnics, who, faced with heightened competition from the continued influx of ethnic compatriots, responded by marrying out instead of not marrying at all.