Sara Greenlee

Family Quiz

The required article this week, was entitled, "Trends in Marital Happiness by Gender and Race, 1973 to 2006" by Mamadi Corra, Shannon K. Carter, J. Scott Carter, and David Knox. This article evaluates marital happiness from 1973 to 2006, and whether or not gender and race are big determinants in how happy married couples are. The methods used to evaluate marital happiness included looking at data from the General Social Survey, ranging from the years 1973 to 2006. All data surveyed 18 or older, English speaking participants in the United States. The dependent variable included asking participants to describe their marriage, with responses for the question being very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy. The independent variable being that of participants' genders and races, specifically looking at White husbands and wives and, Black husbands and wives. As for the results of this article, the authors concluded that males are happiest in their marriages, while Black wives are the unhappiest. The authors also found if participants have these factors in their marriage, their happiness levels are highest: high incomes, highly educated, and attend church frequently. As for the article of my choosing, I chose to evaluate, "Whom Do Immigrants Marry? Emerging Patterns of Intermarriage and Integration in the United States" by Daniel T. Lichter, Zhenchao Qian, and Dmitry Tu.

"Whom Do Immigrants Marry? Emerging Patterns of Intermarriage and Integration in the United States" evaluates the whom exactly do immigrants marry, specifically looking at the United States, and its patterns of intermarriage and integration. To evaluate who immigrants marry, the authors of this article looked at data from the ACS, ranging from the years 2008-2012, specifically looking at 86, 124 native and immigrant couples in that time frame. The results of this article being that marriages between U.S. natives and immigrants has increased over time, with gender and race playing a key part in this. An example of this would be that most native born Asian men marrying Asian women, whereas most native born Black men marry outside of their race. For women, Blacks chose to marry foreign Blacks, while native born Hispanic men were more likely than native born Black men to marry White women.  Overall, it was concluded that in today's society, a large share of U.S. marriages results in marrying immigrants, roughly one in six.