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.

Contenu

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 The Relationships between Religious Assortative Marriage and the Religious Composition of Population
Religious Identification as a Familially Ascribed Characteristic in the United States and Other Societies
Theories of the Rise of Sects and the Assimilation of Churches
Social and Demographic Processes Conditioning Religious Composition in the United States
Replacement of Religious Composition through Marital Selection, Fertility, and the Socialization of Children
The Study of Assortative Marriage in Demography and Other Disciplines
2 Theories of Assortative Marriage
Factors Affecting the In-Marriage and Out-Marriage Proportions of Groups
Causal Ordering and Specifications
Models of Isolated Subpopulations in the Marriage Market
Goodman's and Haberman's Models for Square Contingency Tables and Their Application to Marital Selection Tables
3 Research Design: Data Sources, Study Populations, Problems of Classification, and Preliminary Analysis
NORC, GAF, and DAS Sample Survey Data on Respondents' and Spouses' Religious Origins in the United States
Restriction to the White, First-Married, Native Born Population of the United States
Comparison of First-Married and Remarried Respondents' Marital Selection Tables
Classification of Religious Identification: Logical, Statistical, and Taxonomic Criteria
Social Differentials by Religion: SES Order and R Order
Preliminary Analysis: Deming's Method of Adjustment
4 Parametric Models of Marital Selection Tables
The Hypothesis of Symmetry: S
More Parsimonious Models: CS, CFS, QO-S, and IS
The Algebra of Crossing Parameters: Multiplicative and Additive Scales
Models' Goodness of Fit: NORC, GAF, and DAS Total Respondents' Tables
Maximum Likelihood Estimates of CS and CFS Parameters and Their Euclidean Geometric Interpretation
Representation of the General Marriage Market Model as a System of K Nonlinear Equations in K Unknowns
5 Comparisons of Marital Selection Tables
Elaboration by Regional Origin
Elaboration by Residential Origin
Elaboration by Marriage Cohort: National Data
Elaboration by Marriage Cohort: Detroit and North Central Data
Tests for Changes in Intrinsic Endogamy: National Cohort Data
Summary of Findings and Interpretation
6 Mathematical Properties of the General Model
Existence and Uniqueness of Solution
Comparative Statics, I: Algebraic Solutions for the Partial Derivatives of the In-Marriage Proportions in the Two- and Three-Group Cases
Comparative Statics, II: Numerical Solutions for the Partial Derivatives of the In-Marriage Proportions, National Cohort Data
Extension to Dynamic Analysis
Appendix
References
Subject Index