Parent’s and Child’s Interracial Marriage in Brazil: An Analysis of Intermarriage as an Intergenerational Transmission Process

This article investigates interracial marriage as part of a social reproduction process, looking at to what extent parental endogamy influences the endogamy of a child and how parental race affects the race of a child’s spouse. Data from the Brazilian Social Survey (PESB) for the year 2002 and logit models are used. The characteristics of parental union may influence the choice of a child’s partner through different mechanisms: i) socialization, ii) structural aspects of the individual’s marriage market, and iii) direct parental influence regarding partner choice. The results show that, on average, children of racially endogamous couples are about 78.8% more likely to be in an endogamous union themselves than in a racially exogamous marriage. Parental education is also significant. This means that higher parental education leads to an increased probability of an endogamous union. The results by type of parental union show that parental race matters only for exogamous couples, and an individual’s own race is more relevant among children of endogamous parents. The results for the analysis of parental race and the race of a child’s spouse show that having non-white parents decreases the probability of a child marrying a white spouse. For this specific case, parental education is not statistically significant. These results reinforce the race hierarchy in the process of racial assortative mating, when considering an individual’s own race and the race of their parents. The aspect of the intergenerational transmission of racial endogamy, as it relates to partner choice, is also clarified.

Population Review

Volume 59, Number 1, 2020

Type: Article, pp. 26-55

Parent’s and Child’s Interracial Marriage in Brazil:  An Analysis of Intermarriage as an Intergenerational Transmission Process^[1]

Author: Maria Carolina Tomás

Affiliations: Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais

Corresponding author/address:

email: [email protected]

Abstract

This article investigates interracial marriage as part of a social reproduction process, looking at to what extent parental endogamy influences the endogamy of a child and how parental race affects the race of a child’s spouse.  Data from the Brazilian Social Survey (PESB) for the year 2002 and logit models are used.  The characteristics of parental union may influence the choice of a child’s partner through different mechanisms: i) socialization, ii) structural aspects of the individual’s marriage market, and iii) direct parental influence regarding partner choice.  The results show that, on average, children of racially endogamous couples are about 78.8% more likely to be in an endogamous union themselves than in a racially exogamous marriage. Parental education is also significant. This means that higher parental education leads to an increased probability of an endogamous union. The results by type of parental union show that parental race matters only for exogamous couples, and an individual’s own race is more relevant among children of endogamous parents. The results for the analysis of parental race and the race of a child’s spouse show that having nonwhite parents decreases the probability of a child marrying a white spouse. For this specific case, parental education is not statistically significant. These results reinforce the race hierarchy in the process of racial assortative mating, when considering an individual’s own race and the race of their parents. The aspect of the intergenerational transmission of racial endogamy, as it relates to partner choice, is also clarified.

Keywords

Parental race, endogamy, interracial marriage, Brazil

 © 2020 Sociological Demography Press

[1] The author is thankful to the anonymous reviewer and to the journal’s editors for their comments that greatly improved the paper.