American Economic Review · 2026 · Benjamin Goldman、Jamie Gracie、Sonya R. Porter
中文摘要
美国人很少与自身种族或阶级群体之外的人结婚，这一模式对不平等和代际流动性的影响已有充分的文献记录。有限的接触可能部分解释了这些较低的群体间通婚率。我们利用童年社区中其他种族和阶级群体是否有更多年龄相仿的异性儿童这一变异，为接触构建工具变量。接触增加了跨阶级（高收入家庭与低收入家庭）婚姻，但对跨种族（白人与黑人）婚姻没有可检测到的效应。一个空间婚姻模型预测，居住隔离——众多接触形式之一——解释了超过三分之一的阶级维度婚姻匹配，但在种族维度上不到5%。 （JEL J12, J15, J62, R23）
Abstract
Americans rarely marry outside their race or class group, a pattern with well-documented implications for inequality and intergenerational mobility. Limited exposure may partly explain these low intergroup marriage rates. We instrument for exposure using variation in childhood neighborhoods based on whether other race and class groups had more opposite-sex children of similar age. Exposure increases interclass (high- and low-parent income) marriage but has no detectable effect on interracial (White and Black) marriage. A spatial marriage model predicts that residential segregation—one of many forms of exposure—accounts for more than one-third of marital sorting by class but less than 5 percent by race. (JEL J12, J15, J62, R23)