Residential Segregation and Black-White Intermarriage

Spatial separation of racial and ethnic groups may reduce the probability that mutually acceptable singles of di¤erent races meet each other in the marriage market, or it may have no e¤ect if market participants segments themselves. I …nd that people in more segregated cities are signi…cantly less likely to end up in a racially mixed marriage. I control for reverse causality and endogenous migration using instruments based on characteristics of local government. The decrease in segregation in the typical city between 1980 and 2000 can explain from 3 to 29 percent of the observed increase in black-white intermarriage, with the e¤ect being smallest among white men and highest among black men. Much of the e¤ect of segregation on black-white intermarriage operates through segregation’s impact on black-white di¤erences in educational attainment and employment outcomes, however. Thus, evidence for spatial mismatch is weak