Educational Assortative Mating and Homogamy among New Legal Immigrants to the United States

Gabriela Sanchez-Soto, Princeton University
Pratikshya Bohra-Mishra, Princeton University

This paper use s data from the first wave of the New Immigrant Survey to analyze assortative marriage among immigrants recently admitted to legal permanent residence (LPR) in the U.S. We selected currently married respondents and estimated the probabilities that they will be married to spouses who have the same or higher levels of education. We distinguish between marriages that happened before and after arrival in the U.S. and marriages to U.S.-born spouses. Our models control characteristics like education, age at marriage, number of marriages, skin color, region of origin, religion, and basis for obtaining LPR. Preliminary results show that education has a strong positive effect on educational homogamy. We find that the likelihood of educational homogamy for women and men differs significantly by region of origin, religion, type of green card sponsorship, having married before migration, and being married to a U.S. Citizen.