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This study examines patterns of homogamy and heterogamy and their implications for couple’s fertility behaviour. Data were obtained from demographic and health surveys conducted in Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia between 2001 and 2014. The study population were couples in a monogamous union where wives were aged 35 years and over: 1785 in Ghana, 3185 in Nigeria and 3175 in Zambia. Results of the descriptive analysis show that educational, religious and ethnic homogamy and occupational heterogamy were predominant among the couples and mean children ever born varied according to couples’ characteristics. The significant predictors of fertility as revealed in the multivariate analysis included educational homogamy and heterogamy, occupational homogamy, age difference and religious and ethnic homogamy. To expedite fertility transition in the three countries and other sub-Saharan African countries, programmes and policies aimed at reducing fertility in the region should incorporate strategies that focus on t...

Many young Protestants in the Chinese city of Xiamen marry a non-Christian spouse. How does religious heterogamy illuminate the social and ritual boundaries created by Protestants in Xiamen? Considering the function and permeability of these metaphoric boundaries, how should we visualize them? This article draws on data collected between August 2014 and February 2016. Intermarriage with non-Christians is condemned by most ministers in Xiamen, but it is an essential option for young women who far outnumber marriageable men in most church communities. The resulting weddings are marked by a search for compromises among the bride and groom, their parents, and the social communities for whom their parents host the wedding. It is argued that in terms of function and permeability, the social and ritual boundaries of Protestantism in Xiamen are less like barbed-wire fences than like the gates of a subway system, or the emergency exit of a shopping mall. Since a central aim of Chinese Protestants is to recruit more people to the faith, there is room for women to briefly exit the community and to re-enter with a converted husband. This focus on boundaries as metaphors may contribute to the field of interreligious studies, where boundaries are a key concept.

Thèse sous la direction de Michel Bozon

Social cohesion – particularly with regard to the integration of migrants – is primarily measured in terms of education, labour market participation, unemployment, income levels and poverty. When seen from a historical long-term perspective (considering the migrations of Homo sapiens in the past 300,000 years) admixture merged members of diverse groups and forged – in addition to social ties – ‘strong biological ties’ of kinship, proposing that religious heterogamy is a long-term layer of social cohesion. Accordingly, this study investigated, on the basis of more than 600,000 men and women aged 26–35 years from Austria 2001, Germany (West) 1987, Ireland 2011, Portugal 2011, Romania 2011 and Switzerland 2000, which demographic characteristics foster religious heterogamy, controlling for various confounding factors using linear mixed modelling. By far the most important factor explaining religious heterogamy was the share of adherents to an individual’s religious group in their area of residence. It can be concluded that the rate of intermarriage declines with the increasing size of an individual’s religious group in their area of residence. From a long-term perspective the lack of familial ties (and conjoint offspring) between religious groups could lead to a lack of social cohesion.

Phenotypic invariance—the outcome of purifying selection—is a hallmark of biological importance. However, invariant phenotypes might be controlled by diverged genetic systems in different species. Here, we explore how an important and invariant phenotype—the development of sexually differentiated individuals—is controlled in over two dozen species in the frog family Pipidae. We uncovered evidence in different species for 1) an ancestral W chromosome that is not found in many females and is found in some males, 2) independent losses and 3) autosomal segregation of this W chromosome, 4) changes in male versus female heterogamy, and 5) substantial variation among species in recombination suppression on sex chromosomes. We further provide evidence of, and evolutionary context for, the origins of at least seven distinct systems for regulating sex determination among three closely related genera. These systems are distinct in their genomic locations, evolutionary origins, and/or male versus female heterogamy. Our findings demonstrate that the developmental control of sexual differentiation changed via loss, sidelining, and empowerment of a mechanistically influential gene, and offer insights into novel factors that impinge on the diverse evolutionary fates of sex chromosomes.

Contrary to expectations of joint decision-making, a substantial minority of older married couples report only one spouse possessing an advance directive. Using Health and Retirement Study data, the authors examined advance directive discordance among heterosexual married couples in which at least one spouse had completed an advance directive. It was predicted that spouses who differed in age, self-rated health, or race/ethnicity would be more apt to adopt individualistic as opposed to relational motivational stances, resulting in higher odds of nonmatching advance directive status. Heterogamy did not account for discordance, but couples in which one or both spouses attended some college were more likely to report advance directive concordance. In contrast, couples in which one or both spouses were non-White were more likely to display advance directive discordance. Study results raise concerns about the effectiveness and reach of advance care planning promotion efforts among low-education and non-White older married adults.

This study examines the effect of religious heterogamy on the transmission of religion from one generation to the next. Using data from 37 countries in the 2008 Religion III Module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), I conduct a cross-national analysis of the relationship between parents&rsquo, religious heterogamy and their adult childrens&rsquo, religious lives. By estimating fixed effects regression models, I adjust for national-level confounders to examine patterns of association between having interreligious parents during childhood and level of adult religiosity as measured by self-rated religiousness, belief in God, and frequencies of religious attendance and prayer. The results indicate that having religiously heterogamous parents or parents with dissimilar religious attendance patterns are both associated with lower overall religiosity in respondents. Parents&rsquo, religious attendance, however, mediates the relationship when each parent has a different religion. Having one unaffiliated parent is associated with lower religiosity regardless of parents&rsquo, levels of religious attendance. The negative impact of parents&rsquo, religious heterogamy on religious inheritance is independent of national-level factors and has implications for anticipating changes in the religious landscapes of societies characterized by religious diversity and growing numbers of interreligious marriages.

Using data from a nationally representative sample of married fathers of school-aged children, we examined the association between religious heterogamy of parents and fathers&rsquo, involvement in children&rsquo, s lives. We further examined whether that association is mediated by marital quality and father&ndash, child religious discord. Results showed that greater religious heterogamy is associated with less interaction and more relational distance between fathers and children. Results also suggested that fathers&rsquo, reports of marital happiness play an important role in mediating the association between religious heterogamy and paternal engagement. We concluded that religious fathers are more involved in their children&rsquo, s lives insofar as their wives are equally religious and they are in happy marriages.

International audience; In the last decade, progress has been made in methods to identify the sex determination system in plants. This gives the opportunity to study sex chromosomes that arose independently at different phylogenetic scales, and thus allows the discovery and the understanding of early stages of sex chromosome evolution. In the genus Silene, sex chromosomes have evolved independently in at least two clades from a nondioecious ancestor, the Melandrium and Otites sections. In the latter, sex chromosomes could be younger than in the section Melandrium, based on phylogenetic studies and as no heteromorphic sex chromosomes have been detected. This section might also exhibit lability in sex determination, because male heterogamy and female heterogamy have been suggested to occur. In this study, we investigated the sex determination system of two dioecious species in the section Otites (Silene otites and its close relative Silene pseudotites). Applying the new probabilistic method SEX-DETector on RNA-seq data from cross-controlled progenies, we inferred their most likely sex determination system and a list of putative autosomal and sex-linked contigs. We showed that the two phylogenetically close species differed in their sex determination system (XY versus ZW) with sex chromosomes that derived from two different pairs of autosomes. We built a genetic map of the sex chromosomes and showed that both pairs exhibited a large region with lack of recombination. However, the sex-limited chromosomes exhibited no strong degeneration. Finally, using the "ancestral" autosomal expression of sex-linked orthologs of nondioecious S. nutans, we found a slight signature of dosage compensation in the heterogametic females of S. otites.

This study analyses social heterogamy in western and southern Finland during the early stages of industrialisation, from 1700 to 1910. Marriage patterns are examined by comparing the social classes of spouses' parents, which can be understood as the social origin of the spouse. The rate of heterogamy within the freeholder class was only 19.8%, whereas it was 71.1% in the upper classes, 59.7% in the tenant class and 76.5% in the labour class. In addition, only roughly 20-30% of grooms whose fathers were landowners married brides from lower social classes. Certain individual- and family-level characteristics increased the odds of a heterogamous marriage: remarrying, age difference, being an illegitimate child or a single mother, and the first marriages of those in the labour class. Regarding macro-level variables, we found that higher rates of emigration and poor-relief recipients, along with having a larger Finnish-speaking population, led to higher levels of heterogamy. Other issues increasing the odds of heterogamy included living in the more urbanised or industrialised regions and moving to different regions. This study identified strict marriage patterns, which did not significantly change with respect to heterogamy. Nevertheless, indications exist that industrialisation and urbanisation began eroding the prevailing traditions.

Interracial couples continue to grow in numbers, though there has been little research aimed to understand the experiences and unique challenges of this population. Among these challenges are stressors associated with the interplay between cultural differences and similarities. In this paper, we present an intervention called the visible invisible grid, that can be used to help interracial and intercultural couples discuss their invisible and visible differences and similarities. To illustrate the intervention, a case example is provided along with contraindications and clinical implications.

The authors assessed how the relative age of spouses affects whether men or women initiate a divorce, using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. Ex-spouses' reports of who left generally agreed, but not always, so the analysis used a latent class model embedded in an event-history model with competing risks that the woman leaves the man or the man leaves the woman. Support was not found for the hypothesis that age heterogamy itself increases the odds of divorce: Even large age differences did not make men more likely to leave younger wives, and women's exits were as likely when the marriage is homogamous as when she was older. The main conclusion is that both men and women are more likely to leave if their spouse is older than they are. The effects were stronger for men, but the gender difference in effect size was not statistically significant.

Past research on religious homogamy has struggled to distinguish whether religiosity or homogamy has a stronger impact on preventing a marital dissolution. To rectify this problem, I use a latent class approach to compare couples with various forms of partner religiosity and similarity. Based on 707 newlywed couples from the Marriage Matters survey (1998–2004), I discovered four latent classes: “holy” couples (both partners are highly religious), “nonattending” couples (both partners identify as religious but don’t regularly attend services), “unbalanced” couples (the wife is religious but the husband is not), and “secular” couples (both partners are not religious). Findings indicate that holy, nonattending, and unbalanced couples experience less odds of divorce compared with secular couples, suggesting that religiosity in a variety of forms is more important than partner similarity in avoiding divorce.

This study examines whether family patterns (social origin of family, marital SES, arranged marriage, higher family size norm, and patriarchal family structure (e.g., extended/joint family, patrilocal residence, and family authority) affect age-heterogamy in marriage in rural Bangladesh. One thousand seven hundred fifty-five pairs of married couples for research purpose were randomly selected from Tanore Upazila of Rajshahi district, Bangladesh. The selected couples (e.g., both husband and wife) were individually interviewed, using questionnaire method (e.g., open-ended and close-ended questions). The collected data were analyzed, applying Spearman’s rank order bivariate correlation, X 2 test, and binary logistic regression. Descriptive findings indicated that most of the couples (76.58 %) studied were age-heterogamous than age-homogenous (23.42 %) in the study area. Results suggested that age-heterogamous marriages than age-homogamous marriages were significantly associated with ethnicity, marital SES, family income, arranged marriage norms, patrilocal residence, and autocratic family authority, adjusting for sex, age, age at marriage, and marital duration. Of the predicting factors, Muslim ethnicity, lower marital SES, middle family income, arranged marriage, middle family size, patrilocal residence, and autocratic family authority were the greatest (1–3 % times) risks factors to persist age-heterogamous marriages among the married couples in rural Bangladesh. This research found that age-heterogamous marriages than age-homogamous marriages were significantly associated with Muslim collective identity than Santal identity, hyper marital SES, arranged marriage, middle family size, and patriarchal family structure (patrilocal residence and men’s absolute authority than other characteristics in the family in rural Bangladesh, adjusting for current age, age at first marriage, and marital duration. The findings may have implications in social policy practice with age-heterogamous married couples in rural Bangladesh.

Marriage research consistently shows that spousal religiosity is positively associated with higher marital quality and stability (for reviews, see Mahoney, 2010; Mahoney, Pargament, Tara- keshwar, & Swank, 2008; Waite & Lehrer, 2003). Yet, with few exceptions (e.g., Brown, Orbuch, & Bauermeister, 2008; Bulanda & Brown, 2007; Ellison, Burdette, & Wilcox, 2010; Wilcox & Wolfinger, 2007), the majority of studies linking religious commitment to marriage outcomes have ignored the potential moderating influence of race and ethnicity. This is a notable oversight, for two reasons. First, religious beliefs and practices often shape social life differently across racial and ethnic groups as a consequence of differential access to power and collective group exposure to stigma, discrimination, and socioeconomic deprivation (Taylor, Chatters, & Levin, 2004). Because religion may function differently according to racial and ethnic identity, it is reasonable to suspect that the link between religion and marriage outcomes may also vary according to racial and ethnic identity. Second, scholars have noted the paradoxical finding that whereas religious commitment is positively associated with marital quality, racial and ethnic minorities, who tend to be more religious than non-Hispanic Whites (Espinosa, Elizondo, M Taylor et al., 2004), consistently report lower marital quality relative to non-Hispanic Whites (Broman, 1993; Bulanda & Brown, 2007; Cherlin, 1998; Raley & Sweeney, 2009). This paradox also suggests that the religion-marriage link may differ across racial and ethnic groups.Among the few studies that have examined how race and ethnicity potentially moderate the association between religion and marriage outcomes the focus has either been limited to predicting marriage entry or its dissolution (Brown et al., 2008;Wilcox W Ellison, Trinitapoli, Anderson, & Johnson, 2007; Ellison et al., 2010). Drawing on insights from deprivation theory as well as recent research on religious intimacy, in the present study I shifted the focus to examine how perceived spousal religiosity (holding constant a respondent's own religious characteristics) may be associated with greater returns or benefits to marital quality for particular racial and ethnic groups. To accomplish this, I analyzed data on married Americans from the nationally representative 2006 Portraits of American Life Study (PALS; http://www.thearda.com/pals/). Before I describe the present study in detail, in the following sections I briefly survey what is known about the links among religion, race, ethnicity, and marriage outcomes. I draw on this research to generate expectations about the potential moderating effect of racial and ethnic identity on the relationship between perceived spousal religiosity and marital quality.Religion and Marital QualityWithin the enormous body of research on religion and marriage outcomes (see Mahoney, 2010; Mahoney et al., 2008), findings consistently underscore the importance of religious homogamy in predicting marital quality and stability. Spouses who are homogamous in terms of religious practice (Call & Heaton, 1997; Heaton, 1984; Myers, 2006; Shehan, Bock, & Lee, 1990), broad religious tradition or denominational affiliation (Heaton, 2002; Heaton & Pratt, 1990; Lehrer & Chiswick, 1993; Ortega, Whitt, & William, 1988; Wilson & Musick, 1996), and beliefs (Curtis & Ellison, 2002; Ellison et al., 2010; Lichter & Carmalt, 2009; Vaaler, Ellison, & Powers, 2009) are less likely to separate or divorce, and their marriages are more satisfying for both partners. Conversely, marriages in which there is a good deal of heterogamy in the areas of religious practice, identity, or belief tend to have lower marital quality and stability (Call & Heaton, 1997; Curtis & Ellison, 2002; Lehrer & Chiswick, 1993; Lichter & Carmalt, 2009; Perry, 2015a; Waite & Lehrer, 2003). …

Ahmadiyya has a different concept of kafā’ah in marriage compared to several Muslims communities. The majority of Muslim scholars agree the main factor of kafā’ah in marriage is religiosity which is interpreted as theistic and moral, but Ahmadiyya interprets it as religious commonality. As a result, an Ahmadi woman is forbidden to marry a non-Ahmadi man. Meanwhile, an Ahmadi man is allowed to marry a non-Ahmadi woman, even a non-Muslim woman. Any adherent who violates the provision will be removed from the sect as an organizational sanction. Related to the facts, this paper aims to discuss the motivation, strategy, and goal of the provision. It uses a descriptive-analytic approach to analyze kafā’ah provision in Ahmadiyya literature with homogamy and heterogamy concepts. The results of this study show that the provision is motivated by historical and social factors, such as group discrimination, operational prohibitions, physical and non-physical violence. In addition, Ahmadiyya implements a homogamous-heterogamy concept in the provision as a strategy to preserve its teachings and resist its adherents from other religious affiliations. The provision has been preserving the existence of Ahmadiyya from its establishment to the present. Keywords: Ahmdiyya, Kafā’ah, Homogamy, Heterogamy

Advance directives are used to communicate preferences about future life-sustaining treatment. Most research treats advance directive completion as an individual health behavior. Scholars have recently highlighted the importance of understanding how spouses may influence one another’s planning. Prior research suggests spousal heterogamy influences health behaviors. Using dyadic data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examined how spousal age, education, and health heterogamy related to discordant advance directive completion among heterosexual married couples (65+). Just under 30% of 1,611 couples displayed advance directive discordance. Odds of only one spouse possessing an advance directive increased when the wife was 3+ years older (OR = 1.74, p < .01) and when the wife had more education (OR=1.63, p

Assortative mating provides an indicator of integration and fragmentation in modern societies, and of shifting social boundaries between groups. Assortative mating is expressed in both marital homogamy (likes marrying likes) and heterogamy, variously labeled exogamy, out-marriage, or intermarriage. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate the great progress—both conceptually and methodologically—in studies of assortative mating over the past 25 years. It provides a forward-looking view of key research questions on assortative mating in rapidly globalizing societies and emerging data analytical problems that increasingly require new data, measurement frameworks, and statistical or empirical approaches. The rise of cross-cutting social circles in an increasingly globalized environment, in an age of the internet of growing interpersonal connectivity (i.e., social media), and on-going reductions in the constraints of space suggest new research questions that will create new opportunities for innovation and build on a rich theoretical and research tradition in family demography.

There exists extraordinary variation among species in the degree and nature of sex chromosome divergence. However, much of our knowledge about sex chromosomes is based on comparisons between deeply diverged species with different ancestral sex chromosomes, making it difficult to establish how fast and why sex chromosomes acquire variable levels of divergence. To address this problem, we studied sex chromosome evolution in two species of African clawed frog (Xenopus), both of whom acquired novel systems for sex determination from a recent common ancestor, and both of whom have female (ZW/ZZ) heterogamy. Derived sex chromosomes of one species, X. laevis, have a small region of suppressed recombination that surrounds the sex determining locus, and have remained this way for millions of years. In the other species, X. borealis, a younger sex chromosome system exists on a different pair of chromosomes, but the region of suppressed recombination surrounding an unidentified sex determining gene is vast, spanning almost half of the sex chromosomes. Differences between these sex chromosome systems are also apparent in the extent of nucleotide divergence between the sex chromosomes carried by females. Our analyses also indicate that in autosomes of both of these species, recombination during oogenesis occurs more frequently and in different genomic locations than during spermatogenesis. These results demonstrate that new sex chromosomes can assume radically different evolutionary trajectories, with far-reaching genomic consequences. They also suggest that in some instances the origin of new triggers for sex determination may be coupled with rapid evolution sex chromosomes, including recombination suppression of large genomic regions.

When it comes to heterosexual relationships, choosing a slightly older man is the norm for women around the world, a partnering practice referred to as age hypergamy. In the United States, husbands marrying for the first time are, on average, 2 years older than their wives (Darroch, Landry, & Oslak, 1999; Vera, Berardo, & Berardo, 1985). Overall, nearly one third of all husbands in the United States are at least 4 years older than their wives, but the reverse (known as age hypogamy) is much less frequent. Indeed, census data suggest that only 7.7% of wives are at least 4 years older than their husband (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2012, Table FG3). Empirical work has shown that age hypergamy is not only quite common for marital unions but also for sexual relationships more broadly, that is, regardless of the commitment level in the relationship. For instance, Darroch et al. (1999) looked at the age gap between women and their main sex partner and found that 38% of women age 15-44 were in a sexual relationship with a man at least 3 years older than they; in comparison, only 10% of women were sleeping with a man at least 3 years their junior.Over the past decade, there has been an increasing number of media portrayals and discussions about "cougars"-the term often used to refer to middle-aged women engaging in age-hypogamous sexual relationships- suggesting that we are witnessing the rise of a new phenomenon. For instance, television shows such as Sex and the City (1998-2004) and Cougar Town (2009-present) or movies such as Prime (2005) and Adore (2013) portray middle-aged women having sexual relationships with younger men. There is also a growing consumer market for "cougars," with a proliferation of books advising women on how to find a younger male partner (e.g., Gibson, 2002), dating websites (e.g., https://cougarlife.com), parties, annual meetings, and boat cruises organized for women interested in younger men.The media portrayals of age hypogamy in heterosexual relationships often present "cougars" as White, affluent, and successful women. Furthermore, women's relationships with younger men are generally depicted as temporary flings that rarely culminate into a serious commitment (Kaklamanidou, 2012; Tally, 2006). Cultural representations of women engaging in age-hypogamous relationships are not always positive; indeed, scholars have shown that media depictions of "cougars" often hold these women up for ridicule or present them as somewhat dangerous (Barrett & Levin, 2014; Collard, 2012; Kaklamanidou, 2012). In many ways, the term "cougar" is culturally loaded, given that it includes these negative stereotypes (Montemurro & Siefken, 2014). To avoid such negative connotations, hereafter we refer to older woman-younger man relationships as age-hypogamous sexual relationships.At present, there is little academic research on the occurrence of age-hypogamous sexual relationships. This can be attributed in part to the fact that little scholarly attention has been directed at improving our understanding of middle-aged women's sexuality beyond health-related studies (Gannon, 1999; Montemurro & Siefken, 2014; Rostosky & Brown, 2000). The limited amount of scholarship that has addressed age heterogamy between heterosexual partners has tended to focus almost exclusively on married couples and has virtually ignored those involved in less committed relationships. As a consequence, our knowledge about the prevalence of age-hypogamous sexual relationships (regardless of the commitment level) is very limited. Furthermore, it is unclear who these women are and to what extent they conform to the media depictions of "cougars."With this study, we began to fill this gap in the literature by answering two primary research questions, using detailed data on sexual relationships drawn from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) 2002 (see http://www.cdc. gov/nchs/nsfg.htm). First, how prevalent are age-hypogamous sexual relationships in the United States? …

O objetivo deste artigo é conhecer os principais tipos de relações matrimoniais que se estabelecem entre pessoas de nacionalidade espanhola e brasileira. Os dados foram obtidos a partir da consulta ao Movimento Natural da População (MNP). Os resultados mostram que as uniões entre os nacionais do Brasil residentes em Espanha e a população espanhola são um fenómeno em crescimento desde 2005. Destacam-se especialmente as relações entre os espanhóis e as brasileiras. Conclui-se, também, que as uniões homossexuais são mais frequentes entre homens brasileiros e espanhóis do que entre mulheres de ambos os países. Da mesma forma, pode-se comprovar que as uniões homossexuais entre as duas nacionalidades, de 2005 a 2010, são mais heterogâmicas que as estabelecidas pelos heterossexuais., The the aim of this paper is to identify the main marriage patterns that develop between people of Spanish and Brazilian nationality. The data are obtained from Natural Population Movement (MNP). The results show that unions between nationals of Brazil residents in Spain and Spaniards are a growing phenomenon since 2005. Particularly noteworthy are the links established between Spanish and Brazilian. And homosexual unions are more prevalent among Brazilian and Spanish men than among women of both countries. Similarly, it is observed that homosexual mixed marriages from 2005 to 2010 are more heterogamous than heterosexual mixed marriages., Le but de cet article est d’identifier les principaux modèles de mariage qui sont établis entre les personnes de nationalité espagnole et brésilienne. Les données ont été obtenues à partir du Mouvement naturel de la population (MNP). Les résultats montrent que les mariages entre ressortissants du Brésil et de l’Espagne sont un phénomène croissant depuis 2005. Particulièrement remarquables sont les liens établis entre les espagnols et les brésiliennes. Et les unions homosexuelles sont plus fréquentes entre des hommes brésiliens et espagnols que parmi les femmes brésiliennes des deux pays. De même, on observe que les mariages mixtes homosexuels de 2005 à 2010 sont plus hétérogames que celles établis par des hétérosexuels., El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar los principales patrones matrimoniales que se establecen entre las personas de nacionalidad española y brasileña. Los datos se obtienen a partir del Movimiento Natural de la Población (MNP). Los resultados muestran que las uniones entre nacionales brasileños residentes en España y los españoles son un fenómeno creciente desde 2005. Particularmente digno de mención son los vínculos que se establecen entre el español y la brasileña. Y las uniones homosexuales son más frecuentes entre hombres brasileños y españoles que entre mujeres de ambos países. De igual modo, se observa que las uniones mixtas homosexuales desde 2005 hasta 2010 son más heterógamas que las heterosexuales.

Objectives Prior research points to the importance of couple-level religious similarity for multiple dimensions of partnership quality and stability but few studies have investigated whether this association holds for older couples. Method The current article uses dyadic data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a representative sample of 953 individuals age 62–91 plus their marital or cohabiting partners. We use modified actor-partner interdependence models. Results Religious service heterogamy predicted lower relationship happiness and satisfaction. Both associations were partially explained by the fact that religiously dissimilar partners report relatively little free time in joint activity. Further, religiously heterogamous couples had less frequent sex and engaged in less nonsexual touch than their more similar counterparts. Conclusions Taken together, results attest to the ongoing importance of religious similarity—service attendance, in particular—for partnership quality in late life. Future research is needed to more fully examine which mechanisms account for these patterns.

Background: Very little is known about recent marriage differentials by education in times of marriage decline and economic restructuring in East Asia. Objective: This study aims to contribute to family research in Asia by investigating educational variations in retreat from marriage and mate selection in Taiwan. Methods: This study applied Schoen's (1988) harmonic-mean two-sex marriage propensity approach to nationwide marriage registration data to examine the changing marriage patterns by education in Taiwan between 2000 and 2010. Results: The findings show that the drop in marriage rates is particularly drastic among the least educated. Marriage has become more prevalent and affordable for better-educated Taiwanese. Additionally, the proportion of educationally homogamous marriages has increased, and the share of female-hypergamous marriages of all heterogamy also increased from 2000 to 2010. Decomposition analyses show that these changes are mainly due to decreased marriage propensities, not to the availability of eligible partners. Educational and sex variations in marriage intentions, gender-role and marriage values, and the changing economic structure and financial well-being of young adults were investigated as potential causes. Conclusions: Period marriage differentials by education have reversed from negative to positive in post-millennium Taiwan. A continued reliance on men‟s economic resources is also observed. Differences in gender-role values and economic well-being across social groups are plausible reasons for these family changes. Comments: More research is needed to unravel the impact of education on men and women's family formation prospects and how social inequality may be reinforced and reproduced through matrimony in Asia.

This article examines the effects of parental educational levels on the art/heritage and pop/rock participation of adolescents. We use a subset of adolescents from the survey ‘Cultural Participation in Flanders 2003–2004’ (N = 1030) to test the relative effects of the educational levels of the mother and father. Using diagonal reference models, we find that the parent with the highest educational level – regardless of whether it is the father or mother – has the largest influence on the cultural participation of their children, which can be interpreted as a status maximization effect. However, we also find that a lower educated mother still has an influence on art and heritage participation and a lower educated father still has an influence on pop and rock participation. These results highlight the need to reassess the influence of the mother in the Bourdieusian framework. Furthermore, they have important implications for the conceptualization and operationalization of the social status position of families.

We study the determinants of intra-household decision-making responsibility over economic and financial choices using a direct measure provided in the 1989–2010 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth. We find that the probability that the wife is responsible for decisions increases as the wife's characteristics in terms of age, education and income become closer or even higher than those of her husband's. Thus, consistently with a bargaining approach, decision-making responsibility is associated with marriage heterogamy, and not only along strictly economic dimensions. However, in support of an alternative household production approach, we also find that the probability that the wife is responsible is lower when she is employed, which suggests the presence of a specialization pattern assigning responsibility to the spouse with more available time. Our results are robust to additional controls and alternative samples.

Although the impact of widowhood on the surviving spouse's health has been widely documented, there is little empirical research examining whether certain spousal choice decisions and marital sorting patterns predispose individuals to be more vulnerable to the adverse consequences of widowhood for health.We use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and employ ordinary least squares models to (a) document variations in mental and physical health between married and widowed persons, (b) determine whether widowed persons in age heterogamous unions are especially vulnerable to the adverse consequences of widowhood, and (c) investigate to what extent differential selection, marital quality, and health practices account for health disparities by marital status and the spousal age gap.Widowed persons, especially those in age heterogamous unions, have worse mental health than married persons, but they do not seem to be more disadvantaged in terms of physical health. Differential selection, marital quality, and health behaviors partly account for some of the health disparities by marital status and spousal age gap.Our findings suggest that marrying a spouse who is very dissimilar in age may enhance one's vulnerability to the adverse consequences of widowhood for health.

A common stereotype holds that in Mexico male violence toward women is common among indigenous peoples and reflects cultural norms that sanction a male's domination of his female partner. We employ a recent Mexican survey to examine the relative risk of violence against women as a function of the couple's ethnic homogamy. Among couples in which both partners are either non-indigenous or indigenous the female's risk of partner violence is similar. Among heterogamous couples non-indigenous females in relationships in which the male is indigenous are at elevated risk of violence, while indigenous women in relationships with non-indigenous males are at a lower risk of violence. The stresses associated with heterogamy appear to be more salient in determining a woman's risk of violence than ethnicity per se. The implications for future research and the need to deal with the issue of ethnic homogamy in culturally heterogeneous populations are discussed.

BACKGROUNDIn their pioneering research, Becker, Landes, and Michael (1977) found that beyond age 30 there is a positive relationship between women's age at first marriage and marital instability. They interpreted this finding as a "poor-match effect" emerging when the biological clock begins to tick.OBJECTIVEOur objective was to ascertain with more recent data whether or not there is evidence of a poor match effect and if so, whether it is associated with higher marital instability.METHODSWe used data on non-Hispanic white women from the 2006-2010 National Surveys of Family Growth (NSFG) (N = 3,184).RESULTSWe found evidence of the existence of a poor-match effect: women who delay marriage disproportionately make unconventional matches, which are generally associated with high marital instability. We also found, however, that their unions are very solid. Both of these results were consistent with earlier findings for the 1995 and 2002-2003 NSFG cycles. In attempting to explain this puzzle, we proposed and tested competing hypotheses. We found that the destabilizing effects associated with indicators of unconventional matches are also present in marriages contracted late, but are dwarfed by the stabilizing influences associated with higher levels of education and older ages.CONCLUSIONSThis paper contributes to our understanding of the determinants of marital instability and the poor match effect by providing a new interpretation for the puzzle described above.COMMENTSOur findings have implications for analyses of changes over time in the extent of positive assortative mating in the marriage market, and for the extensive literature showing that heterogamy in traits that are complementary in the context of marriage is destabilizing - heterogamous marriages contracted at a late age are likely to be stable.1. IntroductionThe steady increase in age at first marriage has been one of the most salient demographic trends in the U.S. landscape in recent decades. The median age rose from 20 and 23 for women and men, respectively, in 1950-1960, to 26 and 28 in 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Several factors contributed to this trend, including the development of oral contraception and the legalization of abortion, the growth in cohabitation, changes in household technology, and the decline in the male-female wage gap (Cherlin 2004; Goldin and Katz 2002; Greenwood and Guner 2008; Isen and Stevenson 2012). The focus of this paper is on the growing number of women in the U.S. who are entering marriage in their late twenties or thereafter: What are the characteristics of the unions that they form? Are such unions stable?Two main theoretical concepts are relevant to these questions. First, Becker (1974) developed the idea that in the optimal sorting, there is positive assortative mating (mating of likes) for traits that are complementary within the context of marriage (e.g., education, age, religion, race/ ethnicity) and negative assortative mating (mating of people who are dissimilar) for those that are substitutes (e.g., productivity characteristics). When such sorting does not occur along important dimensions, so that there is a mismatch and the resulting gains from marriage are low, the outcome is a high probability of divorce (Becker, Landes, and Michael 1977; Becker 1990). Expanding on these insights, Oppenheimer (1988) advanced the notion of a "maturity effect:" marriages contracted at an early age are at a higher risk of disruption because they are more likely to be based on mistaken expectations. At young ages individuals have inadequate self-knowledge and are uncertain about their own and their partners' potential trajectories. Moreover, some of their adult attributes have not yet emerged, making assortative mating by such traits impossible. The maturity effect postulates that postponement of entry into first marriage has a stabilizing influence for all these reasons. …

This study investigates the effect of native/immigrant intermarriage on divorce. We used a rich longitudinal dataset from the German Socio-Economic Panel and applied event-history techniques to examine the risk of divorce among immigrants in Germany. Our analysis of the divorce rates of 5,648 marriages shows that immigrant couples have a lower risk of divorce than do natives. However, marriages between German-born individuals and immigrants have a higher likelihood of separation than marriages between two German-born individuals or between immigrants from the same country, supporting the exogamy hypothesis. This pattern largely persists when controlling for the socio-demographic and human-capital characteristics of the spouses. The divorce risk increases with the cultural distance between the partners and when the spouses demonstrate differences in their social backgrounds, also supporting the heterogamy hypothesis and the selectivity hypothesis. We found no support for the adaptation and convergence hypotheses. Divorce levels for mixed marriages are neither similar to the levels of one of the constituent origin groups, nor do they fall between the levels of the two groups; the divorce levels for native/immigrant marriages are higher than those for endogamous marriages.

INTRODUCTIONMany studies have found that ethnic heterogamy, or exogamy, is associated with increased dissolution risks of marriages and cohabiting unions (Jones, 1996; Finnas, 1997; Kalmijn et al., 2005; Dribe and Lundh, 2012; Saarela and Finnas, 2014). As compared with ethnically homogamous unions, partners of ethnically mixed unions can be assumed to have more divergent cultural norms, values and tastes, which will make it more difficult to make joint decisions about the future, including plans about marriage, childbearing, and upbringing (Kalmijn, 1998). In that perspective, the relatively high dissolution risk of ethnically mixed couples comes as no surprise.The traditional approach has been to use information about the ethnic affiliation of each partner in the couple, as generally recorded in population censuses of different countries. In unions with children, additional insights into the relation between ethnic heterogamy and union stability can be gained by infomation about how the offspring is ethnically categorised. To our knowledge, this approach has not been fully utilised in previous research. In this paper, we demonstrate how it can be accomplished using data from Finland.The decisions made after union formation may be more thoughtful than behaviours before mating. If parents of ethnically mixed unions are forced to make a decision about the ethnic categorisation of their children, a conscious choice must be made and this choice might reflect some agreement based on the parents' ethnic preferences (see Xie and Goyette, 1997; Qian, 2004). Ethnic awareness is then reflected by how the ethnically mixed couples choose their children's ethnic affiliation. This is particularly the case in Finland, since the parents must choose how a new-bom baby is ethno-linguistically classified at the time when it enters the country's electronic population register, and this generally occurs when the child is baptised. In contrast to classical assimilation theory, which considers intermarriage to be the final stage of a minority group's assimilation into mainstream society (Gordon, 1964), ethnic awareness may instead be heightened just because of the contrast and competition with the norms of mainstream society and the direct contact with the majority group (Olzak, 1983; Saenz et al., 1995). Ethnic identification of children from interethnic marriages provides an opportunity to exercise one's options (Hout and Goldstein, 1994), and actual behaviour rather than attitudes serves as a guide to individuals' orientation towards their own and other ethnic groups (Finnas and O'Leary, 2003).In this study, we focus on the stability of ethnically mixed and homogamous unions in Finland, and argue that the first-bom child's ethnic affiliation can be used as a rough indicator of individual preferences towards ethnically related norms, values and tastes. Using detailed longitudinal data from population registers, which contain a single classification of each person's ethno-linguistic group, we demonstrate how information about the children can be used to enhance our understanding of previous research on union stability. Since these electronic registers cover the entire population of the country, access to representative samples are easily obtained. The primary aim is to analyse whether it is possible to find effects of ethnic-related individual preferences in terms of how parents in ethnically mixed unions have chosen to register the child. In spite that the prerequisites for this kind of detailed analysis are unusual in an international perspective, we are confident that the behaviour studied here is not unique to this one society, but should be applicable to many other ethnic or religious groups as well (see e.g., Chew et al., 1989; Judd, 1990; Xie and Goyette, 1997; Qian, 2004; Finnas and O'Leary, 2003; Lee and Edmonston, 2005). The particular case of Finland is described next.CONTEXTApproximately 90 per cent of the population in Finland consists of native Finnish speakers, while there also is an indigenous ethno-linguistic group of Swedish speakers that amounts to 291,000 persons, or 5. …

Building on the growing importance of partner effects in stratification research, this study adopts a couple perspective on the division of paid labour in the family. It considers the role of educational heterogamy, and takes account of the family life cycle by means of the presence of (young) children. The importance of these two factors for women’s relative labour market participation is compared between Belgium and Sweden – two European countries that share socio-economic features but differ regarding labour market and social policies. Multinomial logistic Diagonal Reference Models are used to analyse the pooled cross-sectional data of the EU-SILC 2004-2008. Our results show that women’s relative labour market participation is less education-driven in Sweden than in Belgium, and it is more related to the couple effect of educational heterogamy and the life cycle effect of the presence of (young) children, confirming more egalitarianism and family friendliness in Scandinavia than in continental Europe.

This study explores the effects of homogamy and heterogamy in socio-economic background and educational level on the marriage rate among cohabitors. Using unique register data and the Cox proportional hazards model, we analyse marriage formation in over 20,000 cohabiting unions in Finland. The large number of observations enables an inspection of the interactive effects in all partner-status combinations. Our results show that homogamy or heterogamy in socio-economic background is of little consequence for the couple’s probability of marrying; homogamy encourages marriage only among cohabitors from farmer families. With regard to education, homogamy increases the marriage rate among cohabitors with a low level of education, but reduces it among the highly educated. Whether educational heterogamy promotes, deters or has no effect on the marriage rate depends on the combination. The results emphasize the importance of a detailed measurement of homogamy and heterogamy when examining the role of group boundaries in union transitions.

Heterogamous marriages, in which partners have dissimilar attributes (e.g. by socio-economic status or ethnicity), are often at elevated risk of dissolution. We investigated the influences of heterogamy by religion and area of residence on risk of marital dissolution in Northern Ireland, a country with a history of conflict and residential segregation along Catholic–Protestant lines. We expected Catholic–Protestant marriages to have elevated risks of dissolution, especially in areas with high concentrations of a single religious group where opposition to intermarriage was expected to be high. We estimated risks of marital dissolution from 2001 to 2011 for 19,791 couples drawn from the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (a record linkage study), adjusting for a range of compositional and contextual factors using multilevel logistic regression. Dissolution risk decreased with increasing age and higher socio-economic status. Catholic–Protestant marriages were rare (5.9 % of the sample) and were at increased risk of dissolution relative to homogamous marriages. We found no association between local population composition and dissolution risk for Catholic–Protestant couples, indicating that partner and household characteristics may have a greater influence on dissolution risk than the wider community. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10680-016-9398-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

SummaryHumans in many societies are known to mate, or marry, assortatively for a number of characters such as eye colour, height, IQ and place of birth. In this assortment an element of active choice may be involved. It is not known whether this choice is genetic. Two models of human mate choice are examined in which both males and females can express a mating preference. In the first, ‘sexual’ preferences can be expressed for any phenotype not necessarily one's own; in the second, preferences are only expressed for an individual's own phenotype. The results of the examination indicate how much active choice would be needed to account for the observed correlations between human mates, and suggest whether human mating preferences are more likely to be sexual or assorting.

Married cancer patients enjoy a survival advantage, potentially attributable to better health at diagnosis, earlier contact with health personnel, and/or access to resources to ensure more optimal treatment. These mechanisms only invoke the mere presence of a partner, but partners bring varying amounts of resources into the household. It is likely that also spousal resources contribute to differentials in survival net of own resources, as gradients in survival by the latter are well documented. Our aim is to examine the combined roles of own and spouses’ socioeconomic characteristics (SES) and age for cancer survival. Almost 268,000 married patients diagnosed with a first cancer after age 50 during 1975–2007 were identified from the Norwegian Cancer Registry and other national registers. In a sequence of hazard models, differences in survival by patients' own education, income and age and the role of spouses' characteristics were assessed. Furthermore, we also assessed the importance of homogamy/heterogamy along the same dimensions. Partners’ characteristics clearly matter for survival. The relative survival of patients with highly educated partners, net of their own education, is significantly higher than that of patients with lesser-educated partners. Somewhat similar effects are observed for income, net of education. A less consistent pattern is observed for age, although non-normative heterogamy patterns in age and income appear to be associated with a survival disadvantage. The naïve perspective of only considering the presence of partners may thus conceal important differences in cancer survival. Health personnel may take advantage of such knowledge in interactions with patients and their families, and gather information on resources in immediate networks that may impact prognosis favorable and/or unfavorable and help patients utilize these resources to improve prognosis., Highlights • For married cancer patients, survival is influenced by the resources of spouses. • As such, who you marry play a role for your survival. • Having a highly educated and/or a high earning spouse appears to be beneficial. • But, non-normative spousal patterns in age and SES appear to be disadvantageous. • Married patients’ spousal resources may help shed light on inequalities in survival.

This thesis evaluates whether the increasing socioeconomic resources of women and men and the distribution of work within the couple have an effect on union instability. On the one hand, it assesses each spouse’s satisfaction with the union, testing the differences between partners in their perceptions of the quality of the marriage. On the other hand, it studies the stability of the relationship, focusing on the risk of dissolution over time and differentiating between cohabiting and married unions. The focus is on the factors that account for this stability and whether their effects differ by type of couple, both from the perspective of the individual (distinguishing between men and women) and of the couple. The findings suggest that the nature of marriage is different from that of cohabitation and that cohabiting partners are more susceptible to the internal and external negative conditions that unions have to deal with. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that it is important to take into account, if possible, the responses of both partners., Esta tesis evalúa si el incremento en los recursos socioeconómicos de mujeres y hombres y la distribución del trabajo dentro de la pareja afectan a la estabilidad de la unión. Por un lado, investiga la satisfacción individual con la pareja, investigando las diferencias en las percepciones de la calidad de la relación. Por otro lado, estudia la estabilidad de la relación, centrándose en el riesgo de separación en el tiempo y diferenciando entre parejas que cohabitan y parejas que se casan. En concreto, analiza los factores que pueden incidir en la estabilidad y comprueba si sus efectos difieren por tipo de pareja desde una perspectiva individual (diferenciando entre hombres y mujeres) y desde una perspectiva de pareja. Los resultados de los análisis parecen indicar que la naturaleza del matrimonio es diferente de la naturaleza de la cohabitación y que los cohabitantes son más vulnerables a las condiciones negativas, tanto internas como externas, a las que tienen que hacer frente las parejas. Por último, esta tesis demuestra que es importante, si es posible, tener en cuenta la información de los dos miembros de la pareja.

We analyze the changing relationship between education and assortative mating over the course of educational expansion in Switzerland between 1970 and 2000. The main question is whether educational expansion has resulted in increased openness of partnership opportunities or whether the educational system became increasingly important for assortative mating. Census data is used to describe this social change employing a cohort design. Over time and across cohorts, the proportion of people who live without a partner has increased, but the educational classes became more similar with respect to partnerlessness. At the same time, overall educational homogamy of partnerships has remained rather stable, although there were different trends for each of the educational levels. Educational expansion has contributed to increasing heterogamy for less educated and untrained persons while homogamy has increased for persons achieving intermediate and higher levels of education. However, after taking opportunity structure into account, the inclination for educational homogamy is actually more pronounced in the lower educational groups than in the higher and, in particular, the intermediate educational groups. In this respect, one can speak of a polarization of assortative mating with social closure at the lower end of the educational scale and relative openness for intermediate educational classes. This polarization, however, declined somewhat in the course of educational expansion., Für die Schweiz wird untersucht, wie sich der Zusammenhang zwischen Bildung und Partnerwahl zwischen 1970 und 2000 im Zuge der Bildungsexpansion gewandelt hat. Im Vordergrund steht die Frage, ob mit der Bildungsexpansion eine Öffnung der Heiratschancen einherging oder ob die Bedeutung des Bildungssystems für den Partnermarkt eher zugenommen hat. Für die differenzierte Beschreibung im Kohortendesign standen Volkszählungsdaten zur Verfügung. Im Zeitverlauf hat der Anteil Personen, die ohne Partner leben, zugenommen, zwischen den Bildungsschichten fand in Bezug auf Partnerlosigkeit jedoch eine gewisse Angleichung statt. Gleichzeitig beobachten wir relativ stabile Verhältnisse bezüglich der Gesamtrate an bildungshomogamen Partnerschaften, obwohl sich aufgeschlüsselt nach Bildungsniveaus unterschiedliche Trends ergeben: Die Bildungsexpansion hat einerseits zur vermehrten Heterogamie in den unteren Bildungsgruppen beigetragen, während in den mittleren und höheren Bildungsgruppen zunehmende Homogamie zu beobachten ist. In einer um die Gelegenheitsstruktur bereinigten Betrachtungsweise zeigt sich allerdings, dass die Neigung für Homogamie in den unteren Bildungsgruppen ausgeprägter ist als in den höheren und vor allem den mittleren Bildungsgruppen. In diesem Sinne kann von einer Polarisierung des Partnermarktes mit einer stärkeren Schliessung am unteren Ende der Bildungsskala und einer relativen Offenheit in den mittleren Bildungsschichten gesprochen werden, wobei das Ausmass an Polarisierung im Zuge der Bildungsexpansion eher etwas abgenommen hat., Dans le cas de la Suisse, il s’agit d’analyser l’évolution du lien entre formation et choix du partenaire entre 1970 et 2000 au cours de l’expansion du système de formation. La principale question est de savoir si l’expansion du système de formation a entraîné une augmentation des opportunités de mariage ou si le système éducatif a plutôt gagner en importance dans le choix du partenaire. La description différenciée par cohortes se base sur des données issues de recensements de la population. Au cours de la période susmentionnée, le nombre de personnes vivant sans partenaire a augmenté. Toutefois, l’écart entre les différents niveaux d’éducation s’est nettement réduit en ce qui concerne le nombre de personnes vivant sans partenaire. Parallèlement, nous observons un taux plutôt stable de partenariats caractérisés par une homogamie de formation, bien qu’une répartition parniveau de formation révèle différentes tendances: l’expansion du système de formation a, d’une part, entraîné une plus grande hétérogamie dans les groupes au niveau de formation inférieur et, d’autre part, une plus grande homogamie dans les groupes au niveau de formation moyen et élevé. Après une prise en compte des opportunités différentielles, nous observons toutefois que le penchant pour l’homogamie est plus fort dans les groupes au niveau de formation inférieur que dans ceux au niveau de formation moyen et élevé. Nous pouvons donc parler d’une polarisation du marché de la recherche de partenaire avec une plus grande fermeture sociale pour les groupes au niveau de formation inférieur et une relative ouverture pour les groupes au niveau de formation moyen. Cette polarisation a toutefois plutôt diminué au cours de l’expansion du système de formation.

Many claims are made about the significance of interethnic partnerships for individuals and for society. Such partnerships continue to be seen as a “barometer” of the openness of society and have spawned extensive analysis investigating their patterns, trends, and determinants. But we know little about the experience of children growing up in families of mixed parentage. In the United Kingdom, the increase in the self-defined “mixed” population is often celebrated. But there has been little quantitative sociological analysis that has investigated the circumstances of the children of mixed ethnicity partnerships. Using two large-scale UK datasets that cover a similar period, this article evaluates the extent to which mixed parentage families are associated with circumstances (both economic and in terms of family structure) that tend to be positive or negative for children’s future life chances and how these compare to those of children with parents from the same ethnic group. It shows that there is substantial variation according to the outcome considered but also according to ethnic group. Overall, children in mixed parentage families do not unequivocally experience the equality of outcomes with majority group children that the assimilation hypothesis implies.

The prevalence of marital homogamy provides insight into the social organization of group boundaries. For example, educational homogamy reflects the importance of social class (Schwartz and Mare 2005), and racial homogamy is a key indicator of race relations (Qian and Lichter, 2007). It follows that changing rates of intergroup marriage are indicative of shifts in the strength of social boundaries between groups. Marriage implies strong attachment in the most intimate of settings such that increasing intergroup marriage indicates a weakening of social barriers to interaction. The weakening of barriers may also extend to kin, friends and other social networks. Conversely, if social characteristics become more salient in interpersonal relationships, then rates of intermarriage will decline. In turn, increased visibility of couples in heterogeneous relationships can be a force for social change in the social acceptance of these types of relationships, and this change is further reinforced when new cohorts are reared in homes with greater degrees of homogeneity or heterogeneity. Education, race, and religion form different contexts where people form relationships that could lead to marriage. Religious beliefs and behavioral codes shape preferences based on moral judgments and racial preferences are shaped by social constructions of race. Educational and religious institutions also provide a context where potential partners meet. Race affects marriage markets to the degree that neighborhoods, recreational activities and institutions such as education and religion are segregated. Thus, it follows that changes in the racial, religious, or educational context of a society would strongly influence rates of intermarriage. In fact, a large body of research documents multiple mechanisms through which religious, educational, and racial context influences intermarriage rates around the world (Goode 1970; Mare 1991; Kalmijn 1991a, 1991b, 1998; Thornton 2005; Qian and Lichter 2007; Esteve and McCaa 2007; Fu and Heaton 2008; Rosenfeld 2008; Jacobson and Heaton 2008). However, despite the extensive research showing that religion, education, and race each structure interpersonal interaction, the relative importance of these characteristics is not well understood. To date, some research has examined the joint distributions of marriage by education and race, but few have been able to study the joint distributions of all three. Further, none of these studies have examined changes in racial, educational, and religious assortative mating simultaneously. The purpose of this research is to explore changes in the relative importance of religion, race and education in mate selection in a society undergoing dramatic changes in race relations, educational expansion, and religious diversity. More specifically, this research addresses four sets of questions about the nature of intergroup marriage in Brazil. Each set of questions involves both a description of the general tendency and the pattern of change. First, how does the overall likelihoods of homogamy compare across education, race and religion? Second, do sub-categories of education, race and religion vary in the likelihood of homogamy? Third, are there specific patterns of heterogamy that are more common? Finally, is education associated with racial and religious homogamy? This paper addresses these questions by comparing national probability samples for the periods 1991 to 2000, and 2001 to 2008. Answers to these questions will not only provide information about the relevance of these three characteristics in mate selection, but also give clues about how broad social change influences the formation of intimate relationships. Thus it offers a more comprehensive analysis of changing patterns of intermarriage by considering education, race, and religion.

In mammals, birds, snakes and many lizards and fish, sex is determined genetically (either male XY heterogamy or female ZW heterogamy), whereas in alligators, and in many reptiles and turtles, the temperature at which eggs are incubated determines sex. Evidently, different sex-determining systems (and sex chromosome pairs) have evolved independently in different vertebrate lineages. Homology shared by Xs and Ys (and Zs and Ws) within species demonstrates that differentiated sex chromosomes were once homologous, and that the sex-specific non-recombining Y (or W) was progressively degraded. Consequently, genes are left in single copy in the heterogametic sex, which results in an imbalance of the dosage of genes on the sex chromosomes between the sexes, and also relative to the autosomes. Dosage compensation has evolved in diverse species to compensate for these dose differences, with the stringency of compensation apparently differing greatly between lineages, perhaps reflecting the concentration of genes on the original autosome pair that required dosage compensation. We discuss the organization and evolution of amniote sex chromosomes, and hypothesize that dosage insensitivity might predispose an autosome to evolving function as a sex chromosome.