HOMOGAMY

Homophily, Heterophily

Homogamy is marriage between individuals who are, in some culturally important way, similar to each other. The similarity may be based on ethnicity, religion or socio-economic status.

Homogamy is a descriptive concept only and does not refer to rules or customs about mate selection. Homophily often leads to homogamy (marriage to people with similar characteristics).

Homophily which means love of the same, is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. The presence of homophily has been discovered in a vast array of network studies. McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook (2001).

Occupational Homogamy in Eight Countries of the European Union, 1975-89 - Jeroen Smits, Wout Ultee, Jan Lammers, University of Amsterdam, and Nijmegen University. Acta Sociologica, Vol. 42, No. 1, 55-68 (1999)
The association between the occupations of spouses is studied for eight EU countries at several points in time using data from the Eurobarometers. Most of the association is due to a tendency towards occupational similarity between the spouses, though strength of occupational similarity differs between countries and decreases by about 16 per cent between 1975 and 1989, indicating that the social structure of the countries has become more open in this period. By comparing the changes in occupational homogamy of successive birth cohorts over time, we find that when the spouses belonging to a certain birth cohort grow older, their degree of occupational similarity decreases. - asj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/42/1/55

Party Political Homogamy in Great Britain - Richard James Lampard, Univ. of Warwick Coventry, E S R 13:79-99 1997 
There is a high level of party political homogamy in Great Britain. Statistical analyses show that levels of homogamy vary according to strength of party political identification, parental homogamy, age, and marital status. Attitudes towards homogamy are shown to vary with age. The implications of these findings for theories relating to the origins of homogamy and to the consequences of heterogamy are considered. Broadly speaking, the findings indicate that party political homogamy is a consequence of demographic constraints, utility-maximizing choices, and responses to cultural norms. - esr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/79

Why does unemployment come in couples? An analysis of (un)employment and (non)employment homogamy tables for Canada, the Netherlands and the United States in the 1980s - WOUT ULTEE, JOS DESSENS and WIM JANSEN, University of Utrecht
European Sociological Review 4:111-122 1988 
We first raise the factual question of whether wives of unemployed husbands have a higher chance of unemployment than wives of employed husbands. Data for Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the USA in the first half of the 1980s indicate that this indeed is the case. According to one explanation, (un)employment homogamy is a by-product of educational homogamy combined with a relation at the individual level between education and unemployment. Although the existence of educational homogamy in could be ascertained, and although in these countries unemployment is higher when education is lower, these findings could not fully explain the observed extent of (un)employment homogamy. 
According to a more complex explanation, the phenomenon of (un)employment homogamy will disappear when we allow, after these effects of education, for similar effects of age and region. This was tested for the USA, and did not explain the observed extent of (un)employment homogamy. Findings show that labour market inequalities (unemployed persons have less education, are very young or very old, live in certain places) are aggravated by marriage market outcomes (educational and age homogamy). But, in addition, the finding of persistent couple effects suggests that, apart from labour market and marriage market effects, other processes taking place after marriage make for (un)employment homogamy.

The Effects of Religious Homogamy on Marital Satisfaction and Stability 
TIM B. HEATON, EDITH L. PRATT, Brigham Young University 
Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 11, No. 2, 191-207 (1990) © 1990 SAGE Publications
Previous studies have indicated a relationship between religious homogamy and marital satisfaction and stability. Using loglinear analysis of national survey data, this study tested the effects of three types of religious homogamy, namely, denominational affiliation, church attendance, and belief in the Bible. Results indicated that denominational affiliation homogamy is the most critical, with church attendance homogamy contributing slightly to marital success. Similar beliefs about the Bible did not have a statistically significant association with either marital satisfaction or marital stability.

Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness - SUZANNE T. ORTEGA, HUGH P. WHITT, J. ALLEN WILLIAM, Jr., University of Nebraska-Lincoln Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 9, No. 2, 224-239 (1988)
Data from married Protestants and Catholics were used to examine the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. Although couples may vary in the extent to which they share religious views, previous research has treated religious homogamy as a dichotomy; a couple is either homogamous or it is not. In the present study religious bodies were classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual, yielding six categories: Baptist, Calvinist, Catholic, fundamentalist, Lutheran, and Methodist. These categories were then used to develop a measure of estimated "religious distance" or degrees of heterogamy and test the hypothesis that the larger the religious distance or disparity, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage.

Social Integration, Heterogeneity, and Divorce: The Case of the Swedish-speaking Population in Finland - Fjalar Finnäs, Institutet för finlandssvensk samhällsforskning, Vasa - Acta Sociologica, Vol. 40, No. 3, 263-277 (1997) © 1997 Scandinavian Sociological Association
The study compared marital stability in Finland with focus on the two language groups. The divorce rate was remarkably lower among the Swedish-speaking minority than among the Finnish-speaking majority. The assumption about the effect of social integration was also supported by covariates measuring urbanization and individual migration. A hypothesis that marital homogamy reduces the divorce rate found support only with respect to the language of the spouses but not with respect to level of education or age.

Spatial homogamy in the Netherlands: mapping distances between partners
Karen Haandrikman, Leo van Wissen, Carel Harmsen and Inge Hutter
The spatial dimension of the partner market is underexposed in research on recent marriage patterns. When distance decay is applied to partner choice, we can state that the number of unions declines as the distance between potential partners increases. To what extent are partners spatially homogamous in the Netherlands? Can regional and spatial patterns concerning spatial homogamy be identified? For couples who start a shared living, the former addresses of both partners are compared. For all postal codes, distances between partners before shared living are calculated and analysed using a Geographic Information System. Data are aggregated for year of cohabitation and region. We expect the spatial dimension to be important in partner choice, and to be stronger in regions where religion has an important meaning to the population. 
Partners are homogamous regarding age, education, occupation, social origin, religion and geographical origin. The spatial dimension has been underexposed in research on recent marriage patterns. In earlier studies, spatial homogamy, the similarity of partners regarding geographical background, is mentioned. Geographical distances between marriage partners have been examined in a range of countries and regions varying from India to the Outer Hebrides and the Russian federation. 

Ono, Hiromi. 2006. "Homogamy among the Divorced and the Never Married on Marital History in Recent Decades: Evidence from Vital Statistics Data." Social Science Research 35 (2): 356-383. 
I investigate whether divorced and never married persons tend to marry within their own marital history group. This analysis assesses distinctions that may exist between the never married and the divorced, which informs the distinctions between first marriages and remarriages, across which inequality among coresident children has been observed. I find evidence of a tendency toward marital history homogamy beyond that accounted for by relative group size, education, and age. The never married and the divorced are more likely to marry within their marital history group than to intermarry. Results also indicate that, although the tendency toward marital history homogamy unaccounted for by group size, age, and education persisted throughout the period 1970-1988, it did diminish.

INTERMARRIAGE AND HOMOGAMY: Causes, Patterns, Trends
Matthijs Kalmijn, Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24: 395-421 (Volume publication date August 1998) Abstract: People have a tendency to marry within their social group or to marry a person who is close to them in status. Sociologists have most often examined endogamy and homogamy with respect to race/ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status. I first give an overview of hypotheses on the causes of endogamy and homogamy: the preferences of marriage candidates for certain characteristics in a spouse, the interference of "third parties" in the selection process, and the constraints of the marriage market in which candidates are searching for a spouse. I summarize empirical research by answering four questions: To what extent are groups endogamous and how do groups differ in this respect? How has endogamy changed over time? Which factors are related to endogamy? How do various dimensions of partner choice coincide? I discuss strengths and weaknesses of past research.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Homophily in Social Networks
Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, Department of Sociology, University of Arizona, Tucson.
James M Cook, Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 27: 415-444 (Volume publication date August 2001)
The homophily principle, structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. People's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form.