Religious Assortative Marriage

Religious Assortative Marriage in the United States aims to formulate and apply to American religious data, macrosociological models of assortative marriage in pluralistic populations. These models postulate that the factors determining assortative marriage are population structure, social divisions, and norms of endogamy. An important application of these models is to counter the ideological assumption, implicit in the popular image of a melting pot of nations, that the amalgamation of groups in the marriage market is the inevitable outcome of a historical plan of assimilation. The book begins by establishing a demographic framework by embedding assortative marriage in a broader model of the replacement of religious composition. This is followed by separate chapters on specialized theories concerned with the social determinants of assortative marriage; available religious marital selection data in the United States; and regional, residential, and cohort differentials in assortative marriage. The final chapter discusses how the general marriage market model, that is sufficiently flexible to be broadly applicable to diverse structures of religious or other assortative marriage, can be mathematically manipulated to generate laws of social statics and dynamics.