Education and union formation among children of immigrants in Sweden

Ognjen Obucina, Stockholm University

This paper analyzes the impact of education on the patterns of the first union formation among children of immigrants (second generation immigrants) in Sweden. The main contribution of this study to the literature on intermarriage is that it aims to analyze the union formation by simultaneously looking at the partner’s origin and living arrangement (marriage and cohabitation with common children). Based on the previous research on 1) the link between education and living arrangement, and 2) the link between education and partner choice, the main hypotheses are 1) that education will be most positively associated with marriage with a native, and 2) that education will be least positively (most negatively) associated with cohabitation with co-ethnic. Data are drawn from the Swedish register data and cover the period from 1990 until 2012. The main analysis includes Swedish-born individuals with two foreign-born parents originating from the same country. Each individual is at the risk of six competing events: 1) cohabitation with native, 2) cohabitation with co-ethnic, 3) cohabitation with a person of different immigrant background (other type of cohabitation), 4) marriage with native, 5) marriage with co-ethnic, and 6) marriage with a person of different immigrant background (other type of marriage). Separate discrete-time multinomial logit analyses are performed for men and women. Descriptive findings indicate that there is a sizeable variation across immigrant groups in terms of their propensity for endogamy. Multivariate analysis lends support to both hypotheses. The differences between men and women are more pronounced when it comes to the formation of cohabitation.