Measuring Preference for In-marriage

Professor McCaa points to a parallel between the marital index of social distance and a class of measures that have been proposed for the measurement of social mobility, and uses criticisms that have been directed at these measures to infer limitations for the marital index of social distance. It is hardly surprising that parallels can be drawn between algebraic measures used in different contexts of scientific analysis. In fact, an algebraic analogue to the marital index of social distance occurs in at least one other completely different context, that of ergodic theory.' In inferring that the marital index of social distance must be limited in the same way as measures of social mobility, because of similar algebra, McCaa overlooks fundamental differences in the interpretation and construction of the measures. The marital index of social distance is not a social-mobility measure, even though it is based on intermarriage statistics which may coincidentally be used to examine assimilation of a minority to a majority population. The index does not do that; indeed, it is intended partly to show that such assimilation may occur despite intervening social distance. A major structural difference between the two types of measure is that in a crosstabulation of children's occupations with those of their parents (for example), as might be used to construct social mobility measures, the nature of marginal distributions is restricted. The population of children has a fixed marginal distribution of parents' occupations and a fixed size, the only variable being the proportionate distribution of children's occupations. McCaa2 points out the consequence that the possible size of any product of ratios involving marginal values (in particular the 'mobility ratio') is determined within maximal and minimal bounds. It is certainly true that products of ratios are used to construct the marital index of social distance, and that these products include terms which are marginal values of the cross-tabulation of origins of marriage partners. While the form of the ratio-product is considerably different from that of the mobility ratio,3 it is, nevertheless, initially plausible that McCaa's criticism is founded on a valid parallel

Context (archaeology · Econometrics · Geography · Index (typography · Population · Preference · Social distance · Social mobility · Social science · Sociology · Statistics · Computer Science · Demography · Health disparities and outcomes · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Psychology · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

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