THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL CHARACTERISTICS ON A CHILD'S PROBABILITY OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE IN BRAZIL

This paper investigates to what extent parental endogamy can influence the endogamy of a child and how parental race affects the race of a child’s spouse, using data from the Brazilian Social Survey (PESB) for the year 2002. The analysis also considers the type of parental union (exogamy/endogamy) in order to capture possible differences that effect the race characteristics of a child’s spouse as a result of the type of union between the parents. The characteristics of a parental union may influence the choice of a child’s partner through different mechanisms, such as, i) socialization; ii) the individual's marriage market, and iii) direct parental influence regarding partner choice. The results show that, on average, children of racially endogamous couples are about 78.8% more likely to be in an endogamy union themselves than in a racially exogamous marriage. Parental education is also significant. The results by type of parental union show that parental race matters only for exogamous couples, and an individual's own race is more relevant among children of endogamous parents. The results for the analysis of parental race and the race of a child’s spouse show that having nonwhite parents decreases the probability of a child marrying a white spouse. For this specific case, parental education is not statistically significant.