Intermarriage among Arabs in the United States: Patterns, Causes and Significances

Intermarriage is an important indicator of assimilation and identification and may be considered a force of integration. We use data from the 2007-2011 American Community Survey to examine intermarriage among Arab Americans and provide limited comparisons with our earlier findings based on 1990 census data. The topic is of special interest given the impact of the events of 9/11 for this population. The strong socioeconomic position of U.S.-born and foreign-born Arabs would lead us to hypothesize that, in accordance with the basic assimilation hypothesis, Arab Americans are likely to out-marry at high rates. We examine in- and out-marriage rates for Arab men and women by socio-economic characteristics, and employ logistic regression to analyze the influences of acculturation (including place of birth, partial Arab ancestry, and English language proficiency), structural assimilation (education, income and occupational skill level) and cultural assimilation (ethnicity/major ancestry group) on the likelihood of out-marriage. Provisional findings show that Arab Americans continue to have high intermarriage rates and that men and the native-born are more likely to outmarry. The implications of Arab intermarriage are discussed, especially for the ethnic identity of children of such couples.