The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage between natives and immigrants to the U.S.

The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage between nativesand immigrants to the U.S.

Chunbei Wang • Le Wang

Received: 27 March 2011 / Accepted: 20 September 2011 / Published online: 5 October 2011

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract The existing literature generally finds a negative impact of the 9/11

tragedy on immigrants’ labor market performance, consistent with increased dis-

crimination in the labor market and stricter immigration policies. In this paper, we

examine the impact of this tragic event on a particular measure of immigrants’

social outcomes—marriage with a native or intermarriage. We find that the tragic

event actually increases Hispanic immigrants’ probability of being married to a

native. We suggest that our results could be explained by that after 9/11, the

deteriorated labor market conditions, along with tightened immigration policies,

may have led to increased incentives of immigrants to marry natives. This effect is

large relative to the potential discrimination effect, if any, that could reduce natives’

willingness to marry an immigrant. We also find that the magnitude of the effect is

much smaller in the years immediately following 9/11 and becomes larger over

time; and that there exists a large, statistically significant gender difference in the

effects of 9/11 on intermarriage outcomes. Finally, we conduct indirect tests of

proposed explanations; and our results imply existence of economic gains from

intermarriage, and that discrimination may indeed exist.

Keywords Marriage � Intermarriage � Discrimination � Immigrants � 9/11

JEL Classification J12 � J14 � J15 � J61

C. Wang

University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Dartmouth, MA, USA

L. Wang (&)

Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

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Rev Econ Household (2012) 10:171–192

DOI 10.1007/s11150-011-9136-3

1 Introduction and background

The tragic attacks on 9/11, as carried out by foreign terrorists, have triggered an

increase in patriotic and anti-immigration sentiments over the country. These

sentiments, along with national security concerns, fueled the passing of more

stringent immigration policies and increased discrimination against immigrants in

the U.S., although Muslims and Arabs were the direct victims of the 9/11 backlash,

the impact has extended beyond them to other immigrant populations, especially

Hispanic immigrants who constitute the majority of illegal/undocumented immi-

grants in this country (Passel 2006; Passel and Cohn 2009). The literature on 9/11

has typically focused on how it has affected the labor market outcomes among

immigrants. However, the impact may stretch far beyond their labor market

outcomes into their social lives, particularly marriage outcomes. This paper

complements the literature by examining the impact of 9/11 on intermarriage

outcomes (i.e. marriage with a native) among Hispanic immigrants and provides a

fuller picture of its impact on immigrants’ economic and social lives.

The post-9/11 immigration policies at both federal and state levels may have

changed Hispanic immigrants’ living conditions and incentives to marry natives.

First, a number of federal laws (e.g. the USA Patriot Act, the Homeland Security

Act, and the Real ID Act) were passed in the few years after 9/11 to fight terrorism

and illegal immigration.1 In addition to enacting new laws, the government also put

more efforts into enforcing existing immigration policies, resulting in diminished

job opportunities for illegal immigrants. For example, strengthened enforcement of

the ‘‘no-match letter’’ program alone led to thousands of Hispanic immigrants losing

their jobs after 9/11 (Sheridan 2002; Mehta et al. 2003; Orrenius and Zavodny

2009).2 Second, some states have also taken on their own immigration policies.

Actions were taken to limit welfare benefits, ban in-state tuition, prohibit rental

housing, or disallow state driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. State and local

law-enforcement agencies also started joining the 287(g) program of the Immigra-

tion and Nationality Act after 9/11, which led to 81,000 illegal immigrants being

arrested from 2006 to 2008 (Vaughan and Edwards 2009).3

These collective efforts of federal and state governments mostly targeted illegal

immigrants. Since the majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. are Hispanic

immigrants, these policies may have drastically harmed their job market

1 See Orrenius and Zavodny (2009) for a detailed summary. For example, the USA Patriot Act was

signed immediately after 9/11 to expand law enforcement access to private information and to allow them

greater authority to detain or deport immigrants. The Real ID Act (2005) set new federal standards that

require documentation of legal status for immigrants to obtain state driver’s licenses and ID cards.2 The ‘‘no-match letter’’ program reports to employers of employees whose social security number does

not match that on record. Other examples include more frequent large-scale illegal immigration raids

(Orrenius and Zavodny 2009). The E-verify program, an internet-based free program provided by the

government that allows employers to voluntarily check employees’ work eligibility, has also gained

popularity after 9/11. And in fact, several states made it mandatory that some or all companies use

E-verify for new hires.3 The 287(g) program allows state and local law-enforcement agencies to obtain training and

authorization from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office to identify and detain illegal

immigrants during their daily duty.

172 C. Wang, L. Wang

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opportunities and various aspects of their everyday lives. Not only may illegal

Hispanic immigrants be affected, but legal Hispanic immigrants and the Hispanic

community as a whole may also be harmed because of potential discrimination (for

example, they may be more likely to be perceived as being illegal and thus

experience a decline in job opportunities). For example, Orrenius and Zavodny

(2009) show that recent male Hispanic immigrants indeed experienced deteriorated

labor market outcomes, including a decrease in wages, hours worked, and

employment opportunities.

The deteriorated labor market and general living conditions for Hispanic

immigrants after 9/11 may have created more incentives for them to seek stability in

alternative ways. Marrying a native (i.e., intermarriage) could be such an

alternative. Intermarriage has become more prevalent in the past century, and it

has long been recognized as an important way to improve immigrants’ economic

and social well-beings. Numerous studies (e.g. Baker and Benjamin 1997; Meng

and Gregory 2005; Meng and Meurs 2006; Kantarevic 2004; Furtado and

Theodoropoulos 2009, 2010) have shown that immigrants who are married to

natives tend to have higher earnings and better employment outcomes.4 Given the

large benefits of intermarriage, along with the worsened economic status of

Hispanic immigrants after 9/11, we hypothesize that 9/11 may have increased the

intermarriage rate among Hispanic immigrants.

On the other hand, an intermarriage decision is formed by both parties in a

marriage, and thus natives’ attitudes and preferences are also essential to the final

outcome. According to Becker’s theory of marriage, marriages tend to exhibit a

positive assortative mating pattern—people tend to marry individuals with similar

traits such as education, ethnicity, and religion (Becker 1974). In that sense, the

intermarriage phenomenon demonstrates a society’s attitudes toward the accep-

tance of various ethnic groups (Kalmijn 1998; Kalmijn and Van Tubergen 2010).

The catastrophic event of 9/11 has increased the hostile sentiments and

discrimination among natives toward immigrants. Unlike in other areas such as

labor markets, there are no laws regulating discrimination against minorities in the

marriage markets; preferences toward minorities may therefore be revealed more

fully in the marriage markets than in other places. The increased hostile

sentiments and discrimination toward immigrants after 9/11 may thus lead to a

decrease in the willingness of natives to marry immigrants, thereby decreasing the

intermarriage rates.

Even though our discussions seem to suggest that there are two opposing effects

of 9/11 on intermarriage among Hispanic immigrants, we believe that the increased

incentives among immigrants to marry natives (due to increased economic gains

from it) may be more important. We assess the empirical relevance of this

4 The positive effect of intermarriage on immigrants’ labor market performance comes from several

sources. First, immigrants may benefit from the expanded social network through intermarriage, which

could facilitate immigrants’ job search and locating better paid jobs. Second, immigrants may acquire

more human capital through intermarriage, such as improving language and communications skills. As a

result, intermarried immigrants tend to have higher productivity and thus higher wages and better

employment opportunities. Third, intermarriage allows immigrants to obtain permanent residence or

citizenship status which has been shown to have a positive effect on immigrants’ labor market outcomes.

The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage 173

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hypothesis in this paper. In particular, we use the March Current Population Survey

1995–2010 and a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impact of 9/11

on intermarriage among Hispanic immigrants. First, we find a positive effect of 9/11

on Hispanic immigrants’ intermarriages with natives, using other immigrants as the

control group. Further robustness checks imply that our results are not driven by any

particular subgroups or measures of intermarriage. Second, we find that the

magnitude of the effect is much smaller in the years immediately following 9/11 and

becomes larger over time. This result is consistent with the fact that discrimination

or hostile attitudes may be greater at the beginning, offsetting the positive effect of

9/11. Third, we find a large, statistically significant gender difference in the effect of

9/11 on intermarriage outcomes. Finally, we conduct indirect tests of whether there

exist economic returns from intermarriage and of whether discrimination indeed

exists; and our results imply that they do.

Admittedly, the mechanisms discussed above are not the only ones consistent

with the results found here. In this paper, we thus afford alternative explanations for

our results and discuss potential ways to distinguish these explanations should data

be available. We want to emphasize that the purpose of this paper is to document the

empirical effect of 9/11 on intermarriage outcomes. The alternative explanations

afforded here are not intended to be exhaustive, and it is our hope that these results

could stimulate further research on this topic and on marriage markets as an area of

potential discrimination.

2 Conceptual framework

To guide our empirical analysis, we utilize the theory of competitive marriage

markets (Becker 1993; Grossbard-Shechtman 1993). This theory analyzes marriage

outcomes within a competitive marriage market with aggregate demand and

aggregate supply, with men on one side and women on the other and a price (or

quasi-wage termed by Grossbard-Shechtman and Fu 2002) that measures how well a

person is treated in the marriage. The theory is useful and important for analyzing

all forms of marriage outcomes since marriage is always voluntary and men and

women compete for suitable mates. Existing literature has applied such a framework

to analyzing a broad variety of marriage issues such as religious intermarriage

(Grossbard 1983; Grossbard-Shechtman 1993), household chores (Grossbard et al.

2010), and marriage migration (Celikaksoy et al. 2006). As we shall see, this theory

would help us better understand the potential effect of 9/11 on immigrants’

intermarriage outcomes. More important, it could also help us interpret the

empirical estimates of the effect of 9/11 and distinguish potential mechanisms

behind this effect.

Adopting this framework, we analyze the native-immigrant intermarriage market.

For either women or men, we assume immigrants are on the demand side and

natives are on the supply side. The observed intermarriage rate is the equilibrium

outcome where the aggregate demand equals the aggregate supply. Factors such as

changes in preferences and population size may potentially shift the demand and/or

the supply and thus affect the intermarriage rate.


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In light of our discussions above, the worsened economic outcomes among

immigrants and stringent immigration policies after 9/11 increased the values

associated with intermarriage for Hispanic immigrants. As a result, 9/11 may have

changed immigrants’ preferences toward intermarriage by increasing their willing-

ness to marry natives and to actively seek out native partners. Not only may more

immigrants enter the intermarriage market, thereby increasing the population with

demands for intermarriage; the existing participants on the demand side may also be

willing to pay a higher ‘‘price’’ to marry natives than before. Both types of changes

serve as demand shifters, increasing the equilibrium intermarriage rate, given

supply. We denote the positive effect of 9/11 demand-side effect.

Despite the potentially increased willingness of immigrants to marry natives due

to 9/11, the effect of 9/11 on the equilibrium intermarriage outcome may not

necessarily be positive. In addition to its impact on immigrants’ preferences and

attitudes, 9/11 could change natives’ attitudes toward intermarriage as well. Given

the increased hostile sentiments toward illegal immigrants after 9/11, one would

expect a decrease in the willingness of natives to marry these immigrants. Similarly,

this preference change would lead to a decrease in the number of natives available

in the intermarriage market. Moreover, natives who stay in the market may ask for a

higher ‘‘price’’ to marry an immigrant. As a result, the supply of natives in the

intermarriage market would decrease and shift to the left, and the tragic event would

exhibit a negative impact on the intermarriage rate for these immigrants, holding

everything else unchanged; we denote the negative effect of 9/11 supply-side effect.

To summarize, there could be potentially two opposing effects—both demand

and supply side effects—of 9/11 on the equilibrium intermarriage outcome. On the

one hand, if gains from intermarriage for immigrants became more pronounced after

9/11, this would increase demand and thus the number of intermarriages. On the

other hand, if the discrimination against immigrants increased and the anti-

immigration sentiment became stronger after 9/11, this would decrease supply and

the intermarriage rate. Such a decrease, if indeed exists, would imply an increase in

discrimination against immigrants after 9/11. An empirical analysis of the change in

the equilibrium intermarriage rate among Hispanic immigrants after 9/11 allows us

to assess which force prevailed.

3 Empirical methodology

To estimate the effect of 9/11 on immigrants’ intermarriage outcomes, we use the

difference-in-differences estimation method. By comparing the treatment group and

the control group over time, we are able to control for factors or changes that affect

both groups in a similar way. For example, the overall trend of inter-ethnic

integration, the cost of intermarriage such as the easiness of applying for legal status

for foreign spouses, changes in the intenseness of investigation on immigrant

marriage fraud, or the overall trend of marriage and cohabitation decisions may all

have changed over time and would have affected intermarriage between immigrants

and natives even in the absence of 9/11. By choosing an appropriate control group,

we will be able to control for these confounding effects without having to measure


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them and control for these variables explicitly in estimations. We use European and

other immigrants as the main control group. This control group is appropriate

because European and these immigrants were generally not the target of increased

discrimination and strengthened immigration policies after 9/11, and thus the

overall trend of their intermarriage outcomes is less likely affected by the event.

Following the literature (e.g. Orrenius and Zavodny 2009), we conduct a

falsification test and use an alternative control group to assess the validity of the

difference-in-differences estimation below.

The difference-in-differences (DD) estimator of the 9/11 effect can be expressed

as

b ¼ ðYTpost�9=11 � YT

pre�9=11Þ � ðYCpost�9=11 � YC

pre�9=11Þ

where Y measures the intermarriage outcome. T refers to the treatment group (i.e.

Hispanic immigrants) and C the control group (i.e. European and other immigrants).

The term in the first parentheses measures the difference in the intermarriage out-

comes of the treatment group, before and after 9/11. The term in the second

parentheses measures the difference in the intermarriage outcomes of the control

group, before and after 9/11. These two differences are then differenced to single

out the impact of 9/11 on the intermarriage decisions of Hispanic immigrants. The

following regression model is used to obtain the difference-in-differences estimator:

Yist ¼ aþ b1Ti þ b2Post911t þ bTi � Post911t þ XistBþ at þ bs þ uist

where Yist is a binary variable that is equal to 1 if immigrant i in state s at time t is

married to a native, and 0 otherwise. Ti is a dummy variable equal to 1 if immigrant

i is in the treatment group, and 0 if immigrant i is in the control group. Post911t is a

dummy variable equal to 1 if the outcome is observed after 2001, and 0 otherwise.

Ti * Post911t is the interaction term of the treatment group dummy and the after-9/

11 dummy. The coefficient of this interaction term b is the difference-in-differences

estimator, which measures the effect of 9/11 on the intermarriage outcomes of

Hispanic immigrants.

Since individual characteristics can also affect intermarriage outcomes, we

include a number of control variables to improve efficiency. Xist is a vector of

individual socio-economic characteristics including gender, age, age squared/100,

years of schooling, and years in the U.S.5 Furthermore, we include a year fixed

effect at and a state fixed effect bs to control for other unobserved state- and year-

specific heterogeneities. Following the literature (Bertrand et al. 2004), 9/11

affected people from different immigrant backgrounds, and thus we report robust

standard errors clustered at immigrant groups (i.e. Hispanic vs non-Hispanic

immigrant groups).

A number of social and economic studies have examined various determinants of

intermarriage outcomes (Fossett and Kiecolt 1991; Wood 1995; Lichter et al. 1992;

Kalmijn 1998; Anderson and Saenz 1994; Chiswick and Houseworth 2011). As

summarized by Chiswick and Houseworth (2011), these determinants can be loosely

5 The literature also suggests that language ability is an important determinant of intermarriage.

Unfortunately, such information is not available in the data.


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classified into two main categories: ‘‘preference’’ and ‘‘opportunity for contact’’.

Factors such as language skills, human capital, discrimination, and economic

conditions fit into the ‘‘preference’’ category as they affect the tastes and preferences

of different ethnic groups toward intermarriage; factors such as the size and sex ratio

of different ethnic groups fall in the category of ‘‘opportunity for contact’’, as they

affect the opportunity of different ethnic groups interacting with each other.6

To simplify the interpretation of our results, we focus on the reduced-form effect

of 9/11 in this paper. That is, the estimates capture the total effect of 9/11 on

intermarriage through these two different sets of factors. Of the two categories, the

9/11 tragic event would impact intermarriage outcomes mainly by changing

people’s preferences, if it has any effect at all. While opportunity for contact is an

important type of determinants of intermarriage, it seems irrelevant in the 9/11

context, as the size and sex ratio of different ethnic groups are unlikely to have

changed substantially as a result of 9/11.7 Below, the summary statistics also

confirm that the effect of 9/11 on the sex ratio is not significant. Thus we focus our

discussion and estimation on capturing the preference changes after 9/11.

4 Data

The data are obtained from the March supplement of Current Population Survey

(CPS) over the period 1995 and 2010 (available at http://cps.ipums.org) (King et al.

2010). We restrict our sample to individuals aged between 20 and 40. The outcome

of interest is the intermarriage outcome, which is constructed using data on spousal

country of birth. It is defined as a binary variable, equal to 1 if the spouse was born

in the U.S. and 0 otherwise.

We define two categories of immigrants: Hispanic and European, Canadian and

other immigrants. Hispanic countries includes Mexico, Central American and

Caribbean countries, and South American countries. We exclude Muslims,

Arabians, Indians, and what is defined as other African countries in this analysis.

The remaining immigrant population forms our comparison group.8

In our analysis, we include gender, years of schooling, age, age squared, and

years in the U.S. as additional controls. Years of schooling is not directly available

in our data. The CPS asked individuals about the highest grade or diploma

completed instead of years of schooling. Moreover, grades completed below 9th

6 Chiswick and Houseworth (2011) also categorize a third group as factors that affect both preference and

opportunity for contact. Strictly speaking, all factors can more or less affect both, thus we discuss two

categories instead of three.7 Qian and Lichter (2007) and Lichter et al. (2007) find that the increased inflow of Hispanic and Asian

immigrants results in more endogamous marriages over time; this nation-wide trend is captured by year

fixed effects in the estimations.8 Following Kaushal et al. (2007), we define Muslim and Arabian countries as those countries on the

special registration list of the Department of Justice. These countries include Afghanistan, Algeria,

Bangladesh, Cyprus, Egypt/United Arab Republic, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco,

Nepal,Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. We also include Malaysia and Turkey, countries with

predominantly Muslim populations, as in Kaushal et al. (2007).


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http://cps.ipums.org

grade are reported in three-year intervals. Following the literature (e.g. Lemieux and

Card 2001; Henderson et al. 2010), we replace these intervals with midpoints.9

Years in the U.S. is defined as the difference between survey year and year of

immigration.10

Table 1 reports summary statistics of all variables used in the analysis separately

by different immigrant groups and post-911 status. Intermarriage rates across groups

are similar to the ones reported in Kalmijn and Van Tubergen (2010). The

percentage of immigrants married to natives declined after 9/11 for Hispanic

immigrants. The decrease in intermarriages over time suggests that discrimination

may exist in the marriage market and dominate the positive effect of 9/11. Notice

that the control group also experiences a slight decrease in intermarriages over time.

This could be caused by changes in the overall trend of inter-ethnic marriages in the

absence of 9/11. To identify the discrimination and incentive effects of 9/11 on

intermarriage outcomes among Hispanic immigrants, it is important to control for

these changes and thus calls for a formal difference-in-differences analysis. We now

turn to our formal analysis.

Table 1 Summary statistics

Hispanic immigrants Other immigrants

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Pre-911 Post-911 Pre-911 Post-911

Intermarriage 0.173 0.171 0.391 0.371

(0.378) (0.377) (0.488) (0.483)

Male 0.481 0.475 0.426 0.410

(0.500) (0.499) (0.495) (0.492)

Years of schooling 10.339 10.704 14.659 15.317

(4.127) (4.015) (3.752) (3.634)

Age 31.708 32.242 33.201 33.657

(5.235) (5.181) (4.792) (4.654)

Age squared/100 10.328 10.664 11.253 11.545

(3.264) (3.259) (3.078) (3.018)

Years in the U.S. 12.125 12.612 13.521 14.044

(7.643) (8.040) (10.35) (10.473)

No. of obs. 18,684 33,926 8,446 16,502

Standard deviations in brackets. The data are from IPUMS (http://cps.ipums.org/cps/). The paper

examines the effect of 9/11 on intermarriages for two ethnic groups: Hispanicsand Muslims. The sum-

mary statistics are reported for each group separately. See the text for the base category of the variable

‘‘ethnic group’’

9 The coding scheme to convert the education variable to years of schooling is as follows. No schooling

completed (0); Nursery school (0); Kindergarten (0); 1st to 4th grade (2.5); 5th grade to 8th grade (6.5);

9th grade (9); 10th grade (10); 11th grade (11); 12th grade, no diploma (12); High school graduate (12);

Some college (13); Associate degree (14); Bachelor’s degree (16); Master’s degree (18); Professional

degree (20); Doctorate degree (20).10 Year of immigration is also reported in intervals in the data. To be conservative, we use the upper

bound of year of immigration interval.


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http://cps.ipums.org/cps/

5 Results

5.1 Baseline result

Table 2 first presents the baseline result. The reported coefficient is obtained

from the linear probability model, and the robust standard error clustered at

immigrant group is in parentheses. The models include additional variables (state

and time fixed effects, gender, years of schooling, age, age squared, and years in

the U.S.).

We start by discussing the result in column (1). The coefficient of interest is the

DD estimate, capturing the effect of 9/11 on the probability of being married to a

native for Hispanic immigrants. We find a positive effect of 9/11 on intermarriage

probability for Hispanic immigrants. This effect is statistically significant at

p B 0.05 level. However, as noted in Cameron et al. (2008), the conventional

cluster-robust error reported here may cause over-rejection of the null hypothesis

when the number of clusters is small (for example, 2 clusters in our case). Cameron

et al. (2008) advocate use of the wild bootstrap that imposes the null hypothesis and

uses ?1, -1 weights to obtain p value for the test of statistical significance.

Following the procedure detailed in Cameron et al. (2008), we obtain the wild

Table 2 Difference-in-differences (DD) estimates of the effect of 9/11 on intermarriage among Hispanic

immigrants and specification tests of DD design

Baseline Specification tests

A. 1998 as the break

date & years before 2001

B. Alternative

control group

(1) (2) (3)

Hispanic -0.115*** -0.124*** -0.129***

(0.007) (0.010) (0.007)

Post-911 -0.065*** -0.016 -0.060***

(0.011) (0.015) (0.012)

DD estimates 0.022** -0.004 0.023***

(0.008) (0.015) (0.008)

Time fixed effects Yes Yes Yes

Control variables Yes Yes Yes

State fixed effects Yes Yes Yes

No. of obs. 77,558 18,102 73,534

Control variables in the models include gender, years of schooling, age, age squared and years in the

states

Column (1) reports the baseline results. Columns (2) and (3) report the specification tests of our dif-

ference-in-differences design. Column (2) reports the results using the sample prior to 2001 and 1998 as

an artificial break date. Column (3) reports the results using a refined control group including only

Canadian, Europeans (excluding Eastern Europeans), and Asians

Robust standard errors (clustered at immigrant group) in brackets. *** p \ 0.01; ** p \ 0.05; * p \ 0.1


123

bootstrapped p value less than 0.0001 based on 599 replications, and thus our

conclusion is even strengthened.11

The coefficient implies that 9/11 increases the probability of being married to a

native by roughly 2.2 percentage points. As discussed above, two opposing

effects—the demand-side and supply-side effects—of 9/11 on intermarriage may be

at work. There are two explanations consistent with the observed positive effect.

First, discrimination may not have increased in the marriage market at all after 9/11.

Second and more plausibly, discrimination increased after 9/11, but the effect of

increased discrimination on marriage outcomes is small relative to the positive

effect associated with potential economic gains. Both explanations suggest that

there exists a positive effect; that is, after 9/11, the deteriorated labor market

conditions and stringent immigration policies targeting illegal immigrants may have

led to increased incentives for Hispanic immigrants to marry natives.

A number of additional aspects of the baseline result in Table 2 are also worth

mentioning. First, we notice that the coefficient for the Hispanic group dummy is

negative and statistically significant. That is, compared to other immigrants,

Hispanic immigrants are less likely to marry natives, consistent with the literature

(see, e.g. Kalmijn and Van Tubergen 2010). Given the large gains from

intermarriage, our result implies that Hispanic immigrants may assimilate into the

local society at a slower pace than other immigrants. Second, the estimated

coefficient of post-911 dummy is also negative and statistically significant. This

result implies that the overall trend of intermarriage is decreasing after the tragic

event of 9/11, and the magnitude of the overall decline is 6.5 percentage points.12

5.2 Validity of the difference-in-differences method

Thus far, we have assumed the difference-in-differences method works in our

context. But the validity of the difference-in-differences method hinges on the

appropriateness of the control group used. We perform three exercises to assess this

issue.

First, following the literature that examines the effect of 9/11 on immigrants’

economic outcomes (e.g. Kaushal et al. 2007; Orrenius and Zavodny 2009), we

conduct a falsification test by choosing an artificial intervention event prior to 2001

for our analysis. If the control group is indeed comparable and the difference-in-

differences is valid, we would expect that the coefficient of the difference-in-

differences is not statistically distinguishable from zero. The results are presented

in Table 2, column (2). Following Orrenius and Zavodny (2009), we use 1998 as the

11 Please note that the Monte Carlo simulation results presented in Cameron et al. (2008) are still limited.

The smallest number of clusters considered in their paper is 5. Further studies of the applicability of the

wild bootstrap technique in the cases of even smaller clusters are undoubtedly still warranted. And the

robustness of our result should be further examined when other techniques are available. This is, however,

beyond the scope of this paper and left for future research.12 In addition, we find that all the additional variables are also important determinants of intermarriage.

For Hispanic immigrants, education increases the probability of being married to a native, consistent with

the existing literature (e.g. Furtado, in press). Staying in the U.S. longer could also increase the

intermarriage rates. In the interest of space, these results are omitted but available upon request.


123

artificial break date and restrict the sample to the years prior to 2001. We find that

the magnitude of the DD estimate is much reduced, and that the DD estimate is no

longer statistically significant at any conventional level.

Second, we also re-estimate all the analyses using an alternative control group

that includes only Canadian, Europeans (excluding Eastern Europeans), and Asians.

The results are presented in Table 2, column (3). As we can see, the results are

similar to the baseline results. Overall, these results indicate that our differences-in-

differences estimates are valid in this context. Ideally, we may want to further refine

the control group by including either only Canadian and Europeans or only Asians.

However, when using either sub-sample, the estimates are close to zero, and none of

the results are statistically significant. These discrepancies between pooled sample

results and subsample results indicate a small sample problem. Any further

reduction in the sample size may prevent us from distinguishing truly insignificant

results from insignificant results due to small sample sizes.

Finally, we check whether the treatment and control groups were comparable

prior to 9/11. We show this by examining whether there existed differential trends in

the intermarriage rates between the treatment and control groups prior to 9/11. We

thus present the mean intermarriage rates over time for both groups in Fig. 1. The

vertical line is year 2001. Remember that the March CPS was collected in every

March, and thus the years before and including 2001 are classified as the pre-9/11

period. As we can see, the intermarriage trends of the two groups prior to 9/11 were

more or less the same, fluctuating around their own natural levels. During the first

four years, the cycles of the trends between these two groups almost match each

other perfectly. More interestingly, there was a dramatic increase in the

0.1

.2.3

.4

Inte

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riage

Rat

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ong

Imm

igra

nts

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Year

Hispanic Non−hispanic

Fig. 1 Regression-adjusted means of intermarriage rates by immigrant group (1995–2010). Solid line ismean intermarriage rates for Hispanic immigrants; dashed line is mean intermarriage rates for non-Hispanic imigrants. Means have been regression-adjusted for gender, years of schooling, age, agesquared, and years in the USA


123

intermarriage rates among Hispanic immigrants after 9/11, as expected. Consistent

with the discussion of the data above, the control group experienced a slight

decrease in intermarriages in later years. This change could reflect the changes in

the overall trend of intermarriage that potentially continues to decline over time, and

thus it highlights the importance of including both the post 9/11 dummy and the

time fixed effects in our estimations.

5.3 Robustness checks

In this section we further check the robustness of our results to different subgroups

and to particular measures of intermarriage. This practice may also help us shed

some light on potential mechanisms of the 9/11 effect on intermarriage.

First, as suggested in the literature (e.g. Orrenius and Zavodny 2009), the

recession in 2001 may impact immigrants adversely, especially for those who are

illegal immigrants and those in low-paid jobs. This could change immigrants’

intermarriage decisions in a similar way as 9/11 did by increasing gains from

intermarriage. As such, the recession in 2001 could also lead to an increase in

intermarriages, confounding the 9/11 effect. Recall, again, that the year 2001 is

classified as the pre-9/11 period (all data were surveyed in every March), one may

thus be concerned that inclusion of year 2001 may underestimate the impact of 9/11

on intermarriage. To this end, we exclude data from 2001 and re-estimate our

models. The results are reported in column (1), Table 3. Confirming our hypothesis,

our results imply a slightly larger positive effect of 9/11 on intermarriage. In what

follows, we present the results using the sample including the data in 2001.

However, we do estimate all the specifications below using the data excluding year

2001. The results are strengthened, as expected, and our conclusions remain

unchanged. The results are thus omitted but available from the authors upon request.

Second, we use alternative measures of intermarriage as the dependent variable.

Intermarriage is previously defined as whether an immigrant is married to a native.

This definition includes marriages with second-generation (or multiple-generation)

immigrants or other natives whose antecedents are immigrants from the same

country. Since there is a large percentage of native-born Hispanics in the U.S., we

may want to exclude these individuals, as discrimination, if it exists, does not

necessarily reflect itself in the marriages with native-born offsprings of immigrants.

That is, inclusion of these marriages may underestimate the extent of discrimination,

and the resulting estimates tend to be larger and more positive. We utilize the

information on Hispanic origin in the CPS and re-estimate the model for the

Hispanic sample focusing on intermarriage with non-Hispanic natives. The effect of

9/11 on intermarriage, reported in column (2) of Table 3, is indeed smaller;

although the coefficient remains positive and statistically significant, the magnitude

of the effect drops by about 36%. This result is consistent with our discussion above

and suggests possible existence of discrimination.

Third, as discussed above, marriage with a native not only helps immigrants’ job

market outcomes through better knowledge of the labor market or more social

network in the states, but also helps illegal immigrants obtain legal status that could

eventually qualify them for a broader variety of jobs. While both mechanisms imply


123

an increasing return to intermarriage for Hispanic immigrants after 9/11, the latter

factor is more important for undocumented Hispanic immigrants than for authorized

immigrants; this implies a larger total effect for undocumented immigrants. We

want to assess whether or not our result is simply driven by the undocumented

immigrants and whether the positive incentive effect solely comes from obtaining

legal status. Measuring undocumented immigrants is not a trivial task, since the CPS

data do not ask about legal status in the country. However, Furtado and

Theodoropoulos (2010) and Passel (2006) note that undocumented immigrants are

more likely to (1) come from Mexico and Central America (2) live in California,

Texas, Florida and New York, and (3) have less than high school education.

Following their approach, we define those who meet these three criteria as a proxy

for whether they are potentially undocumented immigrants, and re-estimate our

model using only undocumented Hispanic immigrants and the original control

Table 3 Robustness checks of difference-in-differences (DD) estimates of the effect of 9/11 on inter-

marriage among hispanic immigrants

A:

Excluding

data from

2001

B:

Intermarriage

with non-

hispanic

native only

C:

Undocumented

immigrants

only

D.1

Immigrants

who Arrive

under 22

D.2

Drop couples

who arrive

in the same

year

E.

Immigrants

who came

before 9/11

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Ethnic

group

-0.123*** -0.198*** -0.150*** -0.122*** -0.148*** -0.111***

(0.007) (0.006) (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (0.007)

Post-911 -0.070*** -0.072*** -0.089*** -0.091*** -0.078*** -0.097***

(0.011) (0.010) (0.013) (0.015) (0.015) (0.013)

DD

Estimates

0.031*** 0.014* 0.026*** 0.022** 0.034*** 0.016**

(0.008) (0.007) (0.008) (0.010) (0.010) (0.008)

Time fixed

effects

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

State fixed

effects


Other

controls


No. of obs. 72,170 72,285 38,642 47,867 52,805 64,490


states

Column (1) reports the results using the full sample but excluding year 2001. Columns (2) reports the

results using a refined definition of intermarriages: intermarriages with non-Hispanic natives only. Col-

umn (3) reports the results restricting the sample to non-Hispanic and Hispanic undocumented immi-

grants. Undocumented immigrants are those (1) whose birth places are Mexico and Central America; (2)

who live in California, Texas, Florida, and New York; (3) and who have less than high school education

(see, e.g. Furtado and Theodoropoulos (2010) for more discussion). Columns (4) and (5) restrict to the

sample of who are more likely to be married after arriving in the states: immigrants who arrive under age

22 (Column 4) and immigrant-immigrant couples that arrive in the same year (Column 5). Column (6)

keeps only the immigrants who came before 9/11



123

group. The result is reported in column (3) of Table 3. As expected, the coefficient

is larger than the baseline result by 0.4 percentage points.13 This is consistent with

our discussion. However, since the result is still close to the baseline result, this

implies that the incentive to marry a native does not solely come from legal status,

but from other sources as well. Interestingly, the result also suggests that obtaining

legal status is an important mechanism through which 9/11 affected intermarriage

outcomes.

Fourth, one may be concerned that some of the immigrants arrived in the U.S.

already married, and that their marriage decisions were not affected by 9/11 per se,

thus contaminating the results. We assess the robustness of our results against this

concern in two ways. As noted in Georgarakos and Tatsiramos (2009), it is more

likely that immigrants who arrived at a later age were married prior to their arrival.

Thus, we first exclude those who arrived after age 22. Marriage rates are usually low

among students, and individuals aged 22 and above are more likely to have

completed their education. The result is displayed in column (4) of Table 3. As we

can see, the result is almost identical to the baseline result. An alternative test is to

exclude those immigrant-immigrant couples who arrived in the same year. Our

result is even strengthened, as shown in column (5) of Table 3. Overall, it appears

that our results are not driven by the immigrants who were married before their

arrival.

Finally, even though the size and sex ratio of immigrants remained stable after

9/11, as mentioned above, it is still possible that other dimensions of immigrants’

characteristics have changed. In that case, our results cannot indicate if immigrants

changed their behavior after 9/11 or if 9/11 changed the composition of immigrants.

We thus re-estimate our model excluding those immigrants who arrived after 9/11.

Although the coefficient now becomes slightly smaller, we still find a statistically

significant and positive effect of 9/11 on intermarriage [Table 3, column (6)] among

Hispanic immigrants. The result suggests that the majority of the positive effect of

9/11 comes from a change in the behavior of existing immigrants and not from a

change in composition of the immigrants.

5.4 Heterogeneity results

To this point, we have been assuming that the effect of 9/11 on intermarriage is

homogeneous across gender and over time. The gains from intermarriage as well as

the extent of discrimination may however vary across gender and over time. To shed

further light on these issues, we investigate whether there exist any time-varying

effects of 9/11 as well as heterogenous effects across gender.

First, whether the tragic event has varying effects on marriage outcomes over

time depends on whether the event has different impacts on the factors we discussed

above. On the one hand, if a surge in the hostile attitude was temporary after 9/11

and faded away gradually, the negative effect of 9/11 on intermarriage related to

discrimination would become smaller over time. On the other hand, stricter policies

13 The result using only documented Hispanic immigrants and the original control group indicates 9/11

increased the intermarriage rates among them by 1.8 percentage points, and it is statistically significant.


123

and laws are likely to be permanent or in effect for a long period; also, due to

lengthy legislation process, there would be a time lag for any changes. The gains

from intermarriage are likely to be persistent, and the resulting positive impact may

remain roughly the same. Altogether, we may expect the positive demand-side

effect of 9/11 on intermarriage to become even larger over time. We thus

re-estimate our models by adding interactions between dummy variables (indicating

different time periods) and the treatment dummy. The results are reported in

Table 4. We observe that the magnitude of the effect gets larger over time; this is

consistent with our discussion that the positive economic gains from intermarriage

remain constant over time, while the negative effect of 9/11 related to discrimi-

nation gets smaller over time.

Second, our baseline results indicate there exists a mean gender difference in

intermarriage outcomes. On average, males are 0.6 percentage points more likely to

intermarry than females, and it is significant at 0.1 level. In the U.S. there also exists

evidence of gender asymmetry in racial preferences for interracial marriages (e.g.

Fisman et al. 2008). This leads us to suspect there could be a gender difference in

the impact of 9/11 on immigrants. In order to assess the existence of the gender

difference in the impact of 9/11, we re-estimate our models by adding an interaction

between gender, the treatment dummy, and the post-9/11 dummy. The coefficient of

this interaction measures the gender difference in the effect of 9/11. The results are

reported in column (2) of Table 4. We notice a striking gender difference in the

Table 4 Difference-in-differences (DD) estimates of the effect of 9/11 on intermarriage among Hispanic

immigrants by time and gender

Time-varying effects Gender-varying effects

(1) (2)

Hispanic -0.115*** -0.113***

(0.007) (0.006)

Post-911 -0.063*** -0.065***

(0.011) (0.011)

DD estimates

(2002–2005)

0.007

(0.009)

DD estimates

(2006–2010)

0.019**

(0.009)

DD estimates 0.051***

(0.008)

Female x DD Estimates -0.055***

(0.006)

Time fixed effects Yes Yes

Control variables Yes Yes

State fixed effects Yes Yes

No. of obs. 77,558 77,558


states



123

effect of 9/11. For Hispanic male immigrants, the positive effect is very large—an

increase of 5.1 percentage points. By contrast, for Hispanic female immigrants, the

DD effect of 9/11 is 5.5 percentage points less than that for male. In other words, the

effect of 9/11 on Hispanic female immigrants is a small negative effect

(5.1–5.5 = -0.4 percentage points).

Our results imply that the positive effect we found in our base model is mainly

driven by males. We think that this gender difference may be driven by the different

roles of men and women in traditional households. Hispanics tend to be traditional

when it comes to gender roles (Roehling et al. 2005), implying that men tend to be

breadwinners and women tend to be more active in household production than

men.14 By lowering job opportunities and occupational stability 9/11 made it more

difficult for men to satisfactorily fulfill the expectations of a breadwinner, which led

more men to seek spouses with the stability that native status offers. This caused the

upward shift in demand discussed earlier. This shift is expected to be smaller in the

case of women, who were already seeking high earnings and job stability in a

spouse before 9/11, as part of the prescribed roles of traditional wives. Absent a

significant change in demand among women, the negative effect of 9/11 prevails,

implying the existence of discrimination. Moreover, if females are perceived as less

of a threat than males, the discrimination against female immigrants would be

smaller, relative to their male counterparts. Therefore, the negative effect observed

for females could be seen as a lower bound of the discrimination effect for males.

6 Discussion

6.1 Are there any economic gains from intermarriage?

Our results consistently imply that there exists a large positive effect of 9/11 on

intermarriage among Hispanic immigrants. In light of our discussions above, one of

the main sources of the positive effect comes from the increased demand for

intermarriage that may potentially improve the labor market outcomes among

immigrants. In this section we are interested in whether 9/11 affected Hispanic

immigrants’ intermarriage decision via this particular channel. Ideally, we want to

measure ex ante returns to intermarriage (and in turn incentives to marry a native).

This is a more direct test of the mechanism. However, such information is generally

not available and difficult to estimate. Pre-marriage labor market outcomes

(employment status and earnings)—which may be used as proxies for ex ante

returns to intermarriage—are also not available in the cross-sectional CPS data.

Instead we test the mechanism by examining ex post economic gains from

intermarriage. Assuming information about marriage choices is nearly perfect and

uncertainty plays a minor role, the ex post economic returns to intermarriage should

well approximate the ex ante returns. To estimate the ex post economic returns to

14 This is even more so among undocumented immigrants. For example, Passel and Cohn (2009) find that

only 58% of female undocumented immigrants participate in the labor force, which is much lower than

the participation rate for native women or legal female immigrants.


123

intermarriage, we examine the effects of intermarriage on both employment status

(whether or not one is employed) and log earnings among immigrants. Our results

are reported in Table 5. We find that intermarriage is indeed associated with better

labor market outcomes. Being married to a native increases employment rates by

1.2% and earnings by 21.8%. This is consistent with the literature (e.g. Furtado and

Theodoropoulos 2010). Moreover, we also find that Hispanic immigrants’ job

market prospects deteriorated after 9/11, as shown by the negative DD estimates.

Conditioning on intermarriage, this effect captures the direct effect of 9/11 on

immigrants’ labor market outcomes. Altogether, the positive effect of 9/11 on

intermarriage (our baseline result) and the positive effect of intermarriage on labor

market outcomes imply that part of the detrimental labor market effects of 9/11 can

be offset by intermarriage. The offsetting effect may not be particularly large, given

the estimated effect of 9/11 on intermarriage being about 2%. Nevertheless, this

result highlights the possible importance of the labor market incentives that are

associated with the increased rates of intermarriage among Hispanics.

6.2 Does discrimination exist?

One of our goals is to examine whether discrimination actually existed and

increased after 9/11 in marriage markets. However, our baseline result for Hispanic

immigrants suggests either that discrimination may not have increased in marriage

markets at all after 9/11, or that the discrimination effect existed after 9/11, but the

effects of increased discrimination were small relative to the positive effects

Table 5 Difference-in-differences (DD) estimates of the effect of 9/11 on employment status and

earnings

Employment Log earnings

(1) (2)

Ethnic group -0.007 -0.134**

(0.007) (0.061)

Post-911 -0.013 0.264**

(0.012) (0.107)

DD estimates -0.010 -0.120*

(0.008) (0.071)

Intermmariage 0.012*** 0.218***

(0.004) (0.040)




No. of obs. 77,558 77,558

Columns (1)–(2) report the effect of 9/11 on employment (whether one is currently employed) among

Hispanic immigrants, while Columns (3)–(4) report the effect of 9/11 on log earnings; Control variables

in the models include gender, years of schooling, age, age squared and years in the states. Both columns

(2) and (4) also control for immigrants’ intermarriage outcome (whether one is married to a native)



123

associated with potential economic gains. The gender difference in the effects of

9/11 on intermarriage and the results using intermarriage with only non-Hispanic

natives seem to imply the existence of discrimination in marriage markets.

To further examine the existence of discrimination in the marriage market, we

look at the effect of 9/11 on intermarriage among Muslims immigrants. Changes in

attitudes toward immigrants after the 9/11 tragedy may be targeted more at Muslims

than at Hispanics. As such, one may expect that the negative supply-side effect of

9/11 may be stronger for Muslims, and that the overall effect of 9/11 on Muslim

immigrants may be much smaller than that for Hispanic immigrants or even negative.

Table 6 displays the results. Compared to the results for Hispanics, a very different

picture emerges here. The estimated effect of 9/11 on intermarriage among Muslim

immigrants is close to zero and is not statistically significant at any conventional

level.15 In light of our discussion above, the estimates suggest that even though 9/11

may have increased the incentives for Muslim immigrants to marry natives, this

positive effect on intermarriage outcomes is however completely offset by the

negative effect due to discrimination. One may argue that this could also imply there

exists neither positive nor negative effects, instead of the effects offsetting each

other. To further assess this issue, we also restrict our sample to those states that were

most directly impacted by 9/11 and thus potentially more discriminating against

immigrants, i.e. New York, DC, and Massachusetts. The effect of 9/11 turns

negative, and the magnitude (column (2), Table 6) is much larger, although

statistically insignificant due to dramatic declines in sample size. In particular, the

Table 6 Difference-in-differences (DD) estimates of the effect of 9/11 on intermarriage among Muslims

(1) (2)

Full sample States with stronger discrimination

Muslim -0.119*** -0.058**

(0.014) -0.027

Post-911 -0.113*** -0.114***

(0.016) -0.038

DD estimates 0.002 -0.038

(0.017) -0.035




No. of obs. 28,211 3,637


states

Column (1) reports the baseline result for the full sample of Muslims. Column (2) restricts the sample to

the states with potentially stronger discrimination. These states are New York, DC, and Massachusetts


15 The imprecisely estimated effect could be due to the problem of small portion of intermarriages among

Muslim immigrants. The standard errors are indeed larger for the sample of Muslim immigrants.

However, even assuming the same standard errors as for Hispanic immigrants, the estimates do not obtain

the same level of statistical significance as with the estimates for Hispanic immigrants.


123

effect is now -3.8 percentage points! This result is consistent with our hypothesis

that discrimination against Muslim immigrants indeed exists in the intermarriage

market, and that it is even larger in New York, DC, and Massachusetts.

While all these discussions do not provide a direct proof of the existence of

discrimination in marriage markets, the evidence is suggestive of the fact that

discrimination is an important phenomenon in marriage markets.

6.3 Alternative explanations

In our discussions above, we focus on discrimination as the only source of the

negative impact of 9/11 on intermarriage (i.e.natives are less willing to marry

immigrants). However, it is possible that 9/11 increased tensions between natives

and immigrants for both sides. As a result, immigrants may also be less willing to

marry natives, thereby decreasing the number of immigrants participating in the

intermarriage market; as with discrimination, this effect could also offset the

incentives to marry a native, giving rise to the observed patterns above. Although

the conclusions – that economic gains from intermarriage outweigh or offset the

negative effect of 9/11—remain unchanged, the extent of discrimination implied by

our results may be exaggerated. For example, we do not observe any statistically

significant impact of 9/11 on intermarriage for Muslim immigrants. Given

potentially large gains from intermarriage for immigrants, this result implies that

the positive effect of 9/11 due to increased demand for intermarriage is completely

offset by the negative impact. Without considering other sources of negative impact,

we may attribute this result only to discrimination.

One way to distinguish these two mechanisms may be to test the effect of 9/11 on

the treatments (or the price) received by natives in the marriages. Note that although

both mechanisms have similar impacts on the number of intermarriages, they have

different implications for the gains received by native spouses in the marriages,

holding everything else constant. On the one hand, reduced willingness to

participate in the intermarriage market among immigrants (i.e. reduced demand

for intermarriage) would decrease the gains from intermarriage for natives. On the

other hand, reduced willingness to participate in the intermarriage market among

natives (i.e. reduced supply for intermarriage) would increase the gains from

intermarriage relative to alternatives for natives. As a measure of gains from

intermarriage for natives, the treatments received by native spouses within the

households (e.g. domestic violence) may allow us to test the relative importance of

alternative mechanisms. Grossbard et al. (2010) use an innovative measure—time

devoted to household chores—to measure racial discrimination within a marriage.

Such information is unfortunately not available in our data. Grossbard-Shechtman

and Fu (2002) propose that women’s labor supply can be used as an indicator of

how well women are treated in a marriage, since reduced gains received within

marriages may decrease reservation wages for women and thus increase women’s

labor supply. However, this measure is not applicable in the 9/11 context, since, as

discussed above, the existing studies have found that 9/11 has affected the labor

market outcomes of immigrants. It would be impossible to disentangle the changes

in labor supply caused by 9/11 from those caused by intermarriage.


123

Some alternative ways may be to look at the effect of 9/11 on certain spouse

characteristics that people generally value, e.g. spouse’s education and income. For

example, if people prefer more educated spouses, then spouse education might also

be considered as a type of ‘‘price’’ of marriage. Everything else being equal, when

immigrants have a larger incentive to marry a native than an immigrant, they may

pay a higher ‘‘price’’ to a native spouse (e.g. lower level of spouse education). We

believe that a systematic and comprehensive examination of alternative mechanisms

is important in its own right, and we thus leave this for future research.

7 Conclusions

In this paper, we attempt to assess how the 9/11 tragic event affected immigrants’

probability of marrying a native. We find a positive effect of 9/11 on intermarriage

among Hispanic immigrants. Hispanic immigrants are about 2.2 percentage points

more likely to marry natives after 9/11, using European, Canadian and other

immigrants as the control group. The magnitude of the effect is much smaller in the

first two years after 9/11 and becomes larger after that. There also exists a large,

statistically significant gender difference in intermarriage outcomes. In fact, the

large positive effect of 9/11 on Hispanic immigrants’ intermarriage rates seems to

be driven solely by males. Our results suggest that 9/11 changed the attitudes and

preferences toward intermarriage among both immigrants and natives. Further

robustness checks imply that our results are not driven by undocumented

immigrants alone, Hispanic immigrants marrying Hispanic natives, immigrants

who were married before arrival, or new immigrants. Finally, we conduct indirect

tests of whether there are economic gains from intermarriage and of whether

discrimination indeed exists. Our results suggest that they do.

While these findings are of interest, they are reduced-form estimates that are at

best suggestive of underlying mechanisms of how 9/11 affected the intermarriage

outcomes and immigrants’ behavior in general. Future research to further

investigate these mechanisms is warranted for a deeper understanding of

immigrants’ intermarriage decisions. Moreover, should panel data be available, it

would also be of interest for future studies to examine how 9/11 affected the number

of new intermarriages and the divorce rate as a function of intermarriage.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Shoshana Grossbard (the editor), a knowledgeable

and helpful referee, John Hurdelbrink, and session participants at the SEA conference in Atlanta, GA for

helpful comments, suggestions, and discussions of this research.

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The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage between natives and immigrants to the U.S.

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